Note 30 — Chapter IX

George Parkes Bidder was born about the year 1800. So wonderful were his mental powers for giving ready solution to the most difficult questions in arithmetic, without the aid of pen or pencil, that he was known in early life as the “Calculating Boy.” Among the many instances of his ready ability, he once answered in a very short time the following question:—“Supposing the sun be 95,000,000 of miles from the earth, and that it were possible for an insect, whose pace should be seven and a-half inches per minute, to travel that space, how long would it take him to reach the sun?” Bidder became a civil engineer, and was at one time President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.