The Amazing Abacus

For my first real post, I thought I'd talk about something very important in math, the abacus! It's somewhere pretty near the start of mathematics timeline.
      So what is a abacus, you say?
Well, you probably know what an abacus is. It's used worldwide. But basically, an abacus is a counting frame or board. It's really like an ancient calculator. The abacus looks different depending where it came from. The ones normally used by Americans are colorful and big.

An American Abacus

A Chinese abacus looks quite different.

A Japanese abacus is the same only it has one less bead in the top and bottom section.

The abacus was first found in Sumer more than 4,000 years ago. It moved onto China, Japan, and Africa. Finally, it went into the Western world. The American one goes by tens from top to bottom, but the Chinese one uses 4 on the bottom and then a 5 on the top, meaning it could go up to 9. The 2 extra beads were for those who went by 6s. But mainly, the Chinese ignored the extra beads.

An abacus can actually calculate addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square roots, and cube roots. Crazy, huh? All that came from a little board of counting beads. That is why it is safe to say that addition is the most important mathematical operation, however it is really the basis of all the other operations. Although, you might think the abacus is so ancient, the abacus is actually still used worldwide as I mentioned before, mostly by merchants in Africa and Asia. My opinion on the amazing abacus? Well, it's amazing alright but you would probably not find me using one, mostly because I don't how. It's actually quite complicated, using an abacus, but I know how to set up numbers. I just can't add, or subtract, or anything like that.  Use this Abacus Tutorial if you want to learn about basic abacus functions. I will post a site on the Links page if you just want to play with a Chinese abacus. For now, See Ya!