Abstract
Of the 11 extraordinary cyphering books considered in this volume, George Bickham’s was the only one that was specifically prepared for sale to others. We do not know how many copies of this book were printed, but we do know that the copy which we now hold is one of very few which remain. Bickham was a writing master who was regarded, in his time, as one of world’s best penman. As was usually the case with writing masters, he paid much attention to the kind of writing and calligraphy needed to prepare a strikingly beautiful cyphering book, and this book provides testimony to that fact. However, there are hardly any model examples, or exercises for the student to do. The emphasis seemed to be on form rather than mathematical substance, and the language of commercial arithmetic is strongly emphasized. As would have been expected, topics are presented according to the normal abbaco sequence.
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Ellerton, N.F., Clements, M.A.(. (2014). Writing as if Arithmeticke: George Bickham’s Cyphering Book, Circa 1740. In: Abraham Lincoln’s Cyphering Book and Ten other Extraordinary Cyphering Books. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02502-5_8
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