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Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches, Elizur Wright (search)
English on the practical application of life-insurance principles. In 1852 he resigned the editorship of the Chronotype, and from that time till 1858 he was occupied with life-insurance work, the editing of a paper called the Railroad Times, and making a number of mechanical inventions, most important of which was a calculating machine, enough in itself to give a man distinction. This machine was simply a Gunther rule thirty feet in length wrapped on a cylinder and turned by a crank. Gunther's rule is a measure on which logarithms are represented by spaces, so that by adding and subtracting spaces on this cylinder Mr. Wright could perform the longest sums in multiplication and division in two or three minutes of time. Not only did the Massachusetts insurance companies come under Mr. Wright's surveillance, but the New York Life, the Connecticut Mutual, and the Mutual Benefit of New Jersey, all large and powerful companies, were obliged to conform to his regulations, for thei