Abacus

The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool used primarily in parts of Asia for performing arithmetic processes. Today, abacuses 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. The abacus was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.

Etymology

The use of the word abacus dates before 1387 AD, when a Middle English work borrowed the word from Latin to describe a sandboard abacus. The Latin word came from abakos, the Greek genitive form of abax (“calculating-table”), from Hebrew ābāq , “dust”. The preferred plural of abacus is a subject of disagreement, with both abacuses and abaci in use.

School abacus

Around the world, abaci have been used in pre-schools and elementary schools as an aid in teaching the numeral system and arithmetic.

In Western countries, a bead frame similar to the Russian abacus but with straight wires and a vertical frame has been common It is still often seen as a plastic or wooden toy.

The type of abacus shown here is often used to represent numbers without the use of place value. Each bead and each wire has the same value and used in this way it can represent numbers up to 100.