Borrow one

I dont have any particular memories of starting to learn arithmetic at school. Except for the rather grownup thing of having to put H T U & then Th H T U at the top of your sums to keep the columns straight

Except for the incomprehensible business of borrowing one in subtraction. It seems extraordinary now. But hey, it worked. Teacher ticked my answers.

I suppose it was the most efficient, if mysterious, method to use in a world mostly without calculators. Extraordinary too, now, to think of all those counting houses full of Bob Cratchits, or all those delicious tomes of mathematical tables produced by armies of human computers

And when were undergraduates first allowed to use calculators in finals? In my day we had to make do with log tables or slide rule

Title credit 1