Robert Frederick Foster

R. F. Foster was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 31, 1853, the son of Alexander Frederick and Mary E. Macbrair, when he undertook the same role for the New York Tribune. It provided descriptions and laws of more than 100 indoor games and was revised frequently during his lifetime, then by others after his death. One of his last editions was included in the 1939 New York World's Fair Westinghouse Time Capsule, to be opened in 5000 years. Having written numerous whist and bridge books by 1935, he was considered "the dean of living bridge authorities". At that time he directed duplicate bridge at the St. George Club in Brooklyn (Hotel St. George). At some time he lived four years in Germany; at another time, "three years in South Africa, where he lectured and taught bridge in sixty-five towns." He crossed the Atlantic 97 times in all. Foster was a member of several card, athletic, and golf clubs—including Knickerbockers Whist and the Cavendish Club—and a member of the Society of American Magicians. He died December 25, 1945, in Eastham, Massachusetts, survived by one daughter. ==Memory trainer==

Foster left employment at one of the largest manufacturing houses in Baltimore to become the business manager for "Professor Alphonse Loisette" (later identified as Marcus Dwight Larrowe), a lecturer and promoter of systems and methods to develop and improve memory skills. Foster resigned in April 1888, wishing not to be associated with Loisette's unethical personal and business practices and accusing him of being a "humbug and a fraud". Foster subsequently joined William Joseph Ennever and others in a similar business venture, the Pelman School of Memory Training, a correspondence school based in Chicago and London. He delivered lectures and wrote training materials, most notably The Secret of Certainty in Recollection, plainly stated, simply taught: The Pelman–Foster System, a book of five correspondence lessons dating from around 1905. ==Fiction book author==

Foster also wrote a detective novel titled Cab no. 44, which was also translated into German. ==Bibliography==

Foster invented or developed: • Self-playing Cards for Whist, Self-playing Cards for Bridge, and an improved design for Whist Markers. • The Foster Echo, an unblocking play against notrump intended to show count. The rule is explained in the first edition of his ''Foster's Whist Manual'' of 1890 and is a means for opener's partner to infer how many cards held by declarer are higher in rank than the card led; likewise, declarer can infer the same information about his right-hand-opponent's holding. • The first set of laws for contract bridge. ==Notes==