Math Games, Tools, and Toys

How did nineteenth-century Americans teach, learn, calculate, or use numbers? From flash cards to musical scores to rotary dials, the kinds of games, tools, and toys depicted here helped schoolchildren or merchants or others to remember their multiplication tables or determine interest owed on loans.

From the American Antiquarian Society.

Box containing a math game designed to help memorize multiplication tables. Image on cover show family playing the game around a table.

Flash card with image and rhyme used to test or practice multiplication tables. This card asks for the answer to 9 times 7 through the rhyme "The British slaves are all now free; 9 times 7 are [sixty three]."

Musical score and lyrics for singing and memorizing multiplication tables.

Poster for learning and memorizing multiplication table by associating pictures with numbers, and inserting those into a rhyme set to music.

Multiplication table illustrated on roots of Indian Banyan tree, with accompanying tables and descriptions.

This rotary dial provides the solutions to simply multiplication problems by revealing the answers in small windows once the numbers around the outside of the dial are aligned.

Rotary device for calcuating interest by aligning amount of principal with date.