Almanac" is the number of its early assistants who have gained
prominence or distinction in the various walks of life. It would
be difficult to find so modest a public work to exceed it in this
respect.

John D. Runkle, who lived till 1902, was, as I have said, the
senior and leading assistant in the office. He afterward became a
professor in the Institute of Technology, and succeeded Rogers as
its president. In 1876 he started the school of manual training,
which has since been one of the great features of the Institute.
He afterward resigned the presidency, but remained its principal
professor of mathematics. He was the editor and founder of the
"Mathematical Monthly," of which I shall presently have more to say.

The most wonderful genius in the office, and the one who would have
been the most interesting subject of study to a psychologist, was
Truman Henry Safford. In early childhood he had excited attention
by his precocity as what is now sometimes called a "lightning
calculator." A committee of the American Academy of Arts and Science
was appointed to examine him. It very justly and wisely reported that
his arithmetical powers were not in themselves equal to those of some
others on record, especially Zerah Colburn, but that they seemed to
be the outcome of a remarkable development of the reasoning power.
When nine years old, he computed almanacs, and some of his work
at this age is still preserved in the Harvard University Library.
He graduated at Harvard in 1854, and was soon afterward taken into
the Nautical Almanac Office, while he also worked from time to time
at the Cambridge observatory. It was found, however, that the power
of continuous work was no greater in him than in others, nor did he
succeed in doing more than others in the course of a year.

The mental process by which certain gifted arithmetical computers
reach almost in an instant the results of the most complicated
calculations is a psychological problem of great interest,
which has never been investigated. No more promising subject for
the investigation could ever have been found than Safford, and I
greatly regret having lost all opportunities to solve the problem.
What was of interest in Safford's case was the connection of this
faculty with other remarkable mental powers of an analogous but
yet different kind. He had a remarkable faculty for acquiring,
using, and reading languages, and would have been an accomplished
linguist ha