The Virginia Calculator: Thomas Fuller, the slave with remarkable calculation power who was used by antislavery campaigners as a demonstration that blacks were not mentally inferior to whites.
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Thomas Fuller was an African, stolen from his native home at 14 and shipped to America as an enslaved man in 1724. He was sold to a planter in Virginia.
When he was about 70, two gentlemen, natives of Pennsylvania, William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, men of probity and respectable characters, having heard of his extraordinary powers in arithmetics sent for him.
Their curiosity was sufficiently gratified by the answers which he gave to the following questions: First, Upon being asked how many seconds there were in a year and a half, he answered in about two minutes, 47 304 000.
Second: On being asked how many seconds a man has lived who is 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours old, he answered in a minute and a half 2 210 500 800.
One of the gentlemen who employed himself with his pen in making these calculations told him he was wrong, and the sum was not so great as he had said - upon which the old man hastily replied:
stop, master, you forget the leap year. On adding the amount of the seconds of the leap years the amount of the whole in both their sums agreed exactly.
He died at the age of 80 years, having never learned to read or write, in spite of his extraordinary power of calculation.
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