Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1896 — Where Mathematics Failed. [ARTICLE]

Where Mathematics Failed.

The story told by a New Haven correspondent of the Evening Post of the locating a meteor,by Professor H. A. Newton of Yale? from data obtained from a chance photograph of the meteor’s flight, recalls to the Hartford Courant “another story recently related hereabouts by a Yale graduate. This young man, when a student, occupied a room in Divinity Hall. One night he undertook with a toy rifle to hit one of the lights on the campus. His aim was poor and the ball passed through the window of an eminent and venerable professor of science (not Professor Newton) and embedded itself in the wall. This was the opportunity for the professor and for science. He too, set to work and ‘computed the curve,’ and with the* exact skill of infallible figures he traced the ball right back to the room of an innocent colleague, who didn’t even know the rifle had been fired. The unfledged minister flatly denied all knowledge of thq affair. But men, even ministers have been known to make denials in self-defence, and the professor had the proof with him, There was the bullet, there was the marks of Its course, and there was the computation worked out. It looked as if a pulpit career had been nipped in the bud. But the guilty student heard what was going on. He called on the professor, confessed the offence, pointed out that the man of science was 200 feet out in his computation, and advised that the matter be dropped right where it was. And that was done.”