“Thomas Prust his Booke Amen 1702”

Abstract

The person who prepared most of the entries for the cyphering book studied in this chapter was Thomas Prust, who was born in England in 1690 and migrated to New England in 1720. There is a handwritten note in the cyphering book indicating that in 1720 Thomas passed it on to James Collings. Thomas became a shopkeeper and the training he received when he was preparing his beautiful, largely abbaco-inspired, cyphering book would have been beneficial to him during his time as a shopkeeper. He used the galley algorithm when performing division calculations, and was determined to master the rule of three. Many of the problems in the cyphering book were linked to real-life situations. The record indicates that James Collings became a sea captain, and he probably took this cyphering book with him on his voyages. Although we do not know how many later students were guided by this extraordinary manuscript, of one thing we can be certain: this was originally Thomas Prust’s “booke,” and over 300 years later most of it still remains intact.