The Virginia Calculator (1710 - 1790)

 This entire story is a historical account of the life and incredible mathematical skills of a remarkable man, Thomas Fuller, who was known as the 'Virginia Calculator'.

The information you have provided is accurate and is found in various historical accounts. Here is detailed information about him:

🌟 Thomas Fuller: The Virginia Calculator (1710 - 1790)

1. Life and Identity

* Birth and Slavery: Thomas Fuller was born around 1710 on the African continent, probably somewhere between modern Liberia and Benin.

* Arrival in America: At the age of 14 (in 1724), he was captured and brought to America as a slave and sold to a man named Elizabeth Cox in Alexandria, Virginia.

* Nickname: He became known as the "Virginia Calculator" or "Negro Tom" for his extraordinary mental calculation abilities.

 * Educational Qualifications: Despite working hard as a slave all his life, Fuller was illiterate. However, he probably learned to count while in West Africa, where mathematics was an important part of education. He used things like counting and observing the hairs on the tails of cows or grains of grain on the farm to acquire this ability.

2. Historical Test (1780)

In 1780, when Fuller was about 70 years old, two respected men from Pennsylvania, William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, were intrigued by Fuller's ability to count and visited him in Alexandria. They asked Fuller some difficult questions to test him.

| Questions | Fuller's Answers | Time | Specialties |

|---|---|---|---|

| 1. How many seconds are there in a year and a half? | 47,304,000 seconds | About 2 minutes | This answer was correct considering the number of leap years. |

| 2. How many seconds does a person live at the age of 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours? | 2,210,500,800 seconds | Just over a minute and a half | This answer was followed by a famous incident. |

3. Leap Year Controversy and His Intelligence

In response to the second question, an examiner who was calculating on paper mistakenly thought that Fuller's answer was wrong and that the number would be small.

Fuller replied quickly and immediately:

> "Stop, Massa, you forget de leap year." (One of the original quotes is: "Stop, Massa, you forget de leap year.")

> 

After the examiner added in the extra days of leap years and calculated, Fuller's answer was completely correct.

4. Significance

The story of Thomas Fuller was a key piece of evidence in the American Abolitionist Movement. It demonstrated that Africans were no less intelligent than whites, even when deprived of formal education.

Fuller remained a slave until the end of his life, dying in 1790, at the age of 80. After his death, a Philadelphia newspaper published a tribute to him.

The entire story is a powerful example of Thomas Fuller's innate talent as well as his overwhelming intellectual capacity in the environment of slavery.