Edwin Cull Howell (1860–1907) was a whist player in America in the late nineteenth century, at a time when the card game bridge was evolving from the card game whist. He devised the movement system bearing his name, for cards and players first used in duplicate whist and subsequently in duplicate bridge. He was also an accomplished mathematician and chess player.
Little is known about Howell's personal life. He seems to have been an enigmatic figure. Born on 21 April 1860 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, he was the son of a clergyman in a home that looked askance on playing cards!.[1] His parents were George Howell and Frances Sarah Howell (née Cull), and he had three siblings.[2]
Howell was schooled at the Charlier Institute in New York City preparatory to entering Harvard in 1877. Howell learned to play cards, poker first, at Harvard College where he also excelled at chess and was playing championship standard whist by 1881. He left Harvard in 1881 before completing his degree and taught in a private school in Asbury Park New Jersey.[3] He returned to Harvard in 1883, graduating with honors in mathematics for his AB (Bachelor of Arts) degree.
Moving to Baltimore, he taught mathematics at Johns Hopkins University (1884–85) and in two private schools, also becoming the amateur chess champion of that city. In 1887, he became a journalist and joined the staff of The Daily News in Baltimore. By 1889, he was on the Boston Herald where he worked for the next 14 years. In July 1903, he became assistant in the National Almanac Office of the U.S. Navy in Washington DC, a position he held until his death in 1907.[4]
A suggestion that he became a professor of mathematics at MIT was investigated by a PhD student but no evidence to that effect emerged.[5]
Partnering L M Bouvé at the Fourth Annual Congress of the American Whist League in 1894, he won the straight whist match (in a field of 124) for his Boston club, the American Whist Club of Boston.[6]
Howell contributed greatly to The Whist Reference Book[7] of 1898 and is quoted as one of the authorities on the short suit game.[8] He was an early user of the terminology and (NS and EW)[9] to designate the opposing partnership positions at table, rather than the then more popular methods, a method now in common usage in duplicate bridge clubs. He was also much involved in discussions to determine best systems of play and the laws of whist at the Fifth Annual Congress of the American Whist League.[10]
In duplicate bridge, there are two principal schemes for rotating the position of the players and the boards:
At least four books by Howell are available, three republished in recent years:[17] [18]
Wherein Information Is Presented Concerning the Noble Game, in All Its Aspects, After the Manner of a Cyclopedia, Dictionary, and Digest All Combined in One (1898?) by William Mill Butler republished Hansebooks 2017 and Forgotten Books 2015 (Hardback) and 2018 (Paperback)