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The article focuses on Zerah Colburn, a prodigy in the 1800s who was a "Lightning calculator." These individuals perform extraordinary computations quickly in their heads. The article talks about how his father brought him to Boston, Massachusetts and later to Europe to display him and try to make money off of him. He was able to determine that 4,294,967,297 was not a prime number, disproving a Fermat number, which had also been found by Leonhard Euler. Colburn later became a Methodist minister.

Presents the results of a study on calendrical calculators, or people who have the ability to give dates of the past or future quickly. How scientists thought this was a savant skill, an ability not related to general intelligence; Belief that calendrical calculators were autistic; Conclusion that non-autistic people can also have this skill; Relation between ability as a calendrical calculator and intelligence quota (IQ).