The word Abacus comes from the Greek word “ABAX” meaning a calculating board or calculating table. It was invented by the Chinese, the first known record of the abacus was from an ancient sketch in a book from the Yuan Dynasty which was in the fourteenth century. It has a Mandarin name which is “Suan Pan” which means calculating plate. Its inventor is unknown. The Abacus is mostly referred to as the first computer.
An Abacus was made of a rectangular wood frame and had a piece of wood running through the middle. On the top layer there is two rounded beads and on the bottom there is five beads. There were eleven wooden poles which were very small and held the beads in place. On the abacus you could add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
Why does the abacus exist?
It is hard to envision counting without numbers, however sometime in the past composed numbers did not exist. The earliest numbering gadget was the human hand and its fingers. At that point, as bigger amounts (bigger than ten human-fingers could represent) were counted, different regular things like rocks and twigs were utilized to number. Vendors who exchanged merchandise not just required an approach to number products they purchased and sold, additionally to figure the expense of those products. Until numbers were developed, tallying gadgets were utilized to make regular estimations. The math device is one of numerous tallying gadgets imagined to check huge numbers.
You May Also Like to Read