Abacus

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For other uses, see Abacus (disambiguation).

"Abaci" and "abacuses" redirect here. For the Turkish surname, see Abacı. For the medieval book, see Liber Abaci.

A Chinese abacus

Calculating-Table by Gregor Reisch: Margarita Philosophica, 1503. The woodcut shows Arithmetica instructing an algorist and an abacist (inaccurately represented as Boethius and Pythagoras). 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.^[1]

The abacus (plural abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in Europe, China and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Hindu–Arabic numeral system^[1] and is still used by merchants, traders and clerks in some parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, China and Africa. The exact origin of the abacus is still unknown. Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal.

Contents

• 1 Etymology
• 2 History
  • 2.1 Mesopotamian
  • 2.2 Egyptian
  • 2.3 Persian
  • 2.4 Greek
  • 2.5 Chinese
  • 2.6 Roman
  • 2.7 Indian
  • 2.8 Japanese
  • 2.9 Korean
  • 2.10 Native American
  • 2.11 Russian
• 3 School abacus
• 4 Renaissance abaci gallery
• 5 Uses by the blind
• 6 Binary abacus
• 7 See also
• 8 Notes
• 9 Footnotes
• 10 References
• 11 Further reading
• 12 External links
  • 12.1 Tutorials