Colburn, Warren. Colburn's First Lessons: Intellectual Arithmetic, upon the Inductive Method of Instruction. Boston: William J. Reynolds & Co., 1847. New Edition, Revised and Improved. [9570]
Leather spine, printed paper boards, 6 1/4 x 4 1/8 inches, 160 generally clean pp., tight. Very good. Hardcover.
12 pages of introductory material are for the parent or teacher using the book as a text.
Most of the lessons are questions upon practical subjects that, when solved, teach the student arithmetic. For example, "If you buy a pint of nuts for five cents, and an orange for three cents, how many cents would you give for both? how many more for the nuts than for the orange?" Also included are standard drills.
Warren Colburn (1793-1833), b. to a poor family in Dedham, Massachusetts, whose circumstances required Warren to work in factories when a small boy. Through hard work and pluck he received an education (Harvard), became superintendent of a manufacturing company at Waltham, MA, invented several machinery improvements, and continued to flourish in presenting popular lectures on various scientific subjects.
He became "superintendent of schools at Lowell, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1827, and was for several years examiner in mathematics at Harvard. His reputation rests largely on his "First Lessons in Intellectual Arithmetic" (Boston, 1821), the plan of which he had carefully completed while yet an undergraduate at Harvard. It has a large circulation, both here and abroad, and has been translated, not only into most of the languages of Europe, but also into several eastern tongues. He published a "Sequel" to his arithmetic (1824; revised ed., 1833) and an "Algebra" (1827). - Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography.