Arithmetic of Practical Measurements to Accompany Kennedy's Improved Dissecting Mathematical Blocks

In the years following the Civil War, a handful of American educators designed and sold hinged or doweled wooden solids or flat shapes that they could be transposed into other shapes having areas known to students. One of them was Albert H. Kennedy (1848–1940), the superintendent of schools in Rockport, Indiana.

This small paper pamphlet describes an improved form of Kennedy's models for teaching the arithmetic of practical measurement. Drawings show a model of a rectangle, as well as dissected models designed to show related areas of a parallelogram, a trapezoid and a circle. Other drawings show a model of a rectangular solid and related volumes of a cylinder, a cone, a pyramid, and a sphere, and another model relating to the cone and the cylinder. Further models are described for finding square roots, cube roots, and the area of right triangles. Several practical examples are given for each model described. The pamphlet also includes tables of non-metric weights and measures.

For related objects, obtained separately, see 2005.0055.

Currently not on view