Alternatively, without reference to ancient texts on etymology, it has been suggested that it means 'a square tablet strewn with dust', or 'drawing-board covered with dust (for the use of mathematics)' (the exact shape of the Latin perhaps reflects the genitive form of the Greek word, ἄβακoς ( abakos)). The Latin word is derived from ancient Greek ἄβαξ ( abax) which means something without a base, and colloquially, any piece of rectangular material. The word abacus dates to at least AD 1387 when a Middle English work borrowed the word from Latin that described a sandboard abacus. Others may use an abacus due to visual impairment that prevents the use of a calculator. The abacus remains in common use as a scoring system in non- electronic table games. Merchants, traders, and clerks in some parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, China, and Africa use abacuses. Some of these methods work with non- natural numbers (numbers such as 1.5 and 3⁄ 4).Īlthough calculators and computers are commonly used today instead of abacuses, abacuses remain in everyday use in some countries. Any particular abacus design supports multiple methods to perform calculations, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square and cube roots. The abacus is still used to teach the fundamentals of mathematics to some children, for example, in Russia.ĭesigns such as the Japanese soroban have been used for practical calculations of up to multi-digit numbers. In the ancient world, particularly before the introduction of positional notation, abacuses were a practical calculating tool. Abacuses are still made, often as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires. Later the beads were made to slide on rods and built into a frame, allowing faster manipulation. In their earliest designs, the rows of beads could be loose on a flat surface or sliding in grooves. One of the two numbers is set up, and the beads are manipulated to perform an operation such as addition, or even a square or cubic root.

It consists of rows of movable beads, or similar objects, strung on a wire.

The exact origin of the abacus has not yet emerged. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, millennia before the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The abacus ( plural abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool which has been used since ancient times. There was keen competition between the two from the introduction of the Algebra into Europe in the 12th century until its triumph in the 16th. The woodcut shows Arithmetica instructing an algorist and an abacist (inaccurately represented as Boethius and Pythagoras). Calculating-Table by Gregor Reisch: Margarita Philosophica, 1503.

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