Tag: 1912

100-Year-Old Advice on How to Avoid Saying Things in Anger That You’ll Regret

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Saturday, January 13, 1912: It was so cold today. About all I did was to sit around and for fancy work but not without a rasping lecture from my mother. I guess she thinks I am a terrible lazy girl, part of which is true, oh well. I guess we lack something in some way or other.

Mother: Phoebe Muffly

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Was Grandma lazy for doing embroidery, crocheting, or other “fancy work or was her mother having a bad day?

The March 1912 issue of National Foods Magazine offered the following advice for women who had trouble “holding their tongues.”

How the Nervous Woman Can Hold Her Tongue

There are a great many woman who come dangerously near to being common scolds. The reason  for this is that they are living under pressure and have  become bundles of nerves. When such a woman reaches the point where she feels “as though she should fly” let her stop at all hazards, go to her room, open the windows, lie down on the bed, and put on enough clothing to be comfortably warm.

Then relax every muscle in the body, close the eyes, let her get as nearly passive as she can. As one woman says, “Let the bed hold you—don’t try to hold the bed.” Breath in a deep, full breath and while exhaling count to ten slowly. Keep your mind on the numbers. Repeat at least ten times. Lie still for a few moments.

This relaxing and passive condition will be hard at first, but it will quiet the nerves wonderfully. You many feel frowsy. If you have time, sleep a few minutes. A few moments like this will save many a day from failure, will keep back words which may make heartaches, and prevent the home from becoming a place of railing and back-biting in scores of cases. A fine thing for the nervous woman is to take a five-minute walk in the open air every morning if she cannot take a longer one.

Small Mistakes Can Make You Feel Bad

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Thursday, January 11, 1912:Was so disappointed today in arithmetic. I was almost positive I would make a hundred, but instead, I only made ninety due to a small mistake in adding up, but big enough to make you feel bad.

Building that once housed the McEwensville schools. The high school was on the second floor.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

The test would have been on cube roots. On January 5 and January 8 Grandma wrote about struggling to learn how to do them.

Even though Grandma was frustrated with herself, it’s better than some of her previous grades in math. For example, on October 31,1911 she wrote:

Feel rather doleful over the mark I made in Algebra: 68. 68, you I hate.

What Does Declension Mean?

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Wednesday, January 10, 1912: There is sleighing now, but all the same, I haven’t got a ride yet. Began with our monthly exams today. I had a hard declension down pat in Latin, but it happened to be excluded in the number of questions.

Rachel and Al were down this evening. I wish I knew all about the questions tomorrow.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I learned a new word today. Declension means the change of form in some languages that nouns, pronouns, and adjectives undergo to indicate distinctions such as gender, number, person, and tense.

Rachel Oakes was a friend of Grandma and her sister Ruth. Al was Rachel’s brother. They lived on a nearby farm.

Cube Root Word Problems

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Monday, January 8, 1912: A regular snow storm set in this afternoon. How beautiful the snowflakes looked as they descended to ground. Am now able to extract the cube root without difficulty. Pa came for Jimmie and me this evening.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

The teacher must have clarified how to do cube roots. Grandma was struggling with cube roots the previous Friday.

As a parent who had strong opinions during the “math wars” of the 1990’s about what should be included in (and, perhaps more importantly, what should be excluded from) the math curriculum, I’m fascinated by early 20th century math text books.

In textbooks from a hundred years ago, there was more focus on calculation than there is today but they also contained some cool word problems. Cube roots are a great example of this.

Here are some cube root word problems from a 1911 textbook called Kimball’s Commercial Arithmetic:

1. If a cubical block contains 21,952 cubic inches, how many square feet of paper will be required to cover the entire surface?

2. The entire surface of a cubic block is 384 square feet. How many 1-foot cubes can be cut from the block, allowing nothing for waste?

3. A cubical cistern holds 400 bbl. of water. How deep is it?

4. What are the dimensions of a cube that has the same volume as a box 2 ft. 8 in. long, 2 ft. 3 in. wide, and 1 ft. 4 in. deep?

The texts also contained lots of “tricks” and principles.

Principles

1. The cube of a number cannot have more than three times as many figures as its root, nor but two less.

2. If a number is separated into periods of three figures each beginning at the units’ place, the number of figures in the cube root will be the same as the number of periods.

I thought of several easy cube roots (100 is the cube root of 1,000,000. and 5 is the cube root of 125.), and decided that the principles are correct. (Of course they were correct—but somehow I felt better after I thought of a few problems to confirm it.)

If you’re a math geek, here are some previous posts that explored the math curriculum and problems from a hundred years ago.

Odd, Unusual, and Strange Math Problems

More Odd, Unusual, and Strange Math Problems

1911 Algebra Problems: The Lusitania and Molasses

Old Math Problems

An Old Mental Math Trick

Lowest Common Multiples and Highest Common Factors

Fractions in 1911 Algebra Book

Has the Math Curriculum Been Dumbed Down?

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Friday, January 5, 1912: It’s so cold now. How quickly the weather has changed. I didn’t mind it at all in school for the stove sent forth a regular shower of heat. Was rather freezy coming home and the wind a blowing. We’ve come to the extracting of the cube root in arithmetic and I can’t see very good the way it’s done. But suppose I can after I get some kind of an explanation from somebody and not from the book alone. We had these things several years ago, but my idea of them is now rather hazy.

Cube root example from Kimballs Commercial Arithmetic (1911). If you want to read the example, click on the picture to make larger.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Whew, math has changed a lot over the years.

I never learned how to do cube roots when I took math in the 1960’s and 70’s, but I can remember struggling with square roots. My children can manually calculate neither square roots nor cube roots, but they do know how to calculate them using a calculator.

Has the curriculum been dumbed down over the years? . . . or has the tedium been removed so that students have time to grapple with more complex problems?

January Brings to Us a New Born Year!

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today: 

Monday, January 1, 1912:  Not getting tired in the least of keeping a diary even if I do not travel or do anything as interesting. I will still continue to write down the happenings as the days go by, as I did last year. Understand this is not the beginning of a new diary, but simply a continuation of the old one, guaranteed to be full of numerous mistakes and blunders, much to the writer’s annoyance.

1912

This is leap year and rightfully belongs to old maids and maidens, especially the neglected ones, like my snappy sister, etc.

January brings to us a new born year,

To do with as we will

So each worthy deed be done

And every glad and hopeful thought fulfilled.

New Year’s day for me had a rather doleful beginning, but brightened up as the day passed on. Carrie came over this afternoon and we went a skating or rather she did the skating and I the tumbling.  I was just experimenting, being the first time I really tried to skate. Maybe I’ll buy a pair of skates pretty soon, as I haven’t any of my own. But the learning, however, isn’t much fun.

Ruth and I went up to Oakes this evening. It is so grand these evenings. One I could most read by moonlight.

New Year Post Card, circa 1912

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I’ve now been posting these diary entries for one year—and like Grandma I’m not getting tired in the least.  I enjoyed posting entries in 1911 and look forward to learning more about Grandma and her times during the upcoming year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!