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Notes for CHARLES HOWARD HINTON:

Notes from introduction to a book, Speculations on the Fourth Dimension, Selected Writings of Charles H Hinton, Copyright 1980 by Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-23916-0, LC 79-54399, Newton Free Library, Newton Massachusetts 520.11, HS9S, 1980.

 

He is also known for his speculations on the fourth dimension. He married a daughter of logician George Boole, but was forced to leave England after a bigamy conviction, after also having married Maud Wheldon. After serving a one-day prison sentence for the offence, he fled with his first family to Japan, where he taught for some years, before taking up a post as instructor in mathematics at Princeton University. While there, in 1897, Charles invented a gun used in baseball batting practice (Harper's Weekly March 20 1897, 301-2), to assist the team in batting practice. After a spell as assistant professor at Minnesota, he served at the Naval Observatory and as a patent examiner in Washington. There he died suddenly when asked to give a toast to "female philosophers" at the Society of Philosophical Inquiry meeting.

 

Charles devised methods of visualising the geometry of higher dimensions, which he explained in various books, and also exploited in various science fiction stories, one of which is said to have inspired Edwin Abbot's Flatland. He coined the name tesseract for the four-dimensional analog of a cube.

Source: Howard Everest Hinton papers:

Charles Howard Hinton was professor of mathematics in Tokyo and Minnesota.

 

In 1869 Charles was living at 18 Saville Row, London

He played rugby for Oxford in 1872

 

1881 census

Dwelling:          Stockerston Road, Uppingham, Rutland, England

Charles H. HINTON, 25, born Bartholomew Square, London, Middlesex, England, head of household, schoolmaster, BA Oxon

Mary E.B. HINTON, 24, Cork, Ireland, wife

Alicia BOOLE, 20, Cork, Ireland, visitor, annuitant

Martha COOK, 23, Gedeny Hill, Lincoln, England, servant