9/25/2023 0 Comments Abacus chinese or japaneseIt was covered with pictures including a "treasurer" holding a wax tablet in one hand while manipulating counters on a table with the other. Also from this time frame the Darius Vase was unearthed in 1851. Below this crack is another group of eleven parallel lines, again divided into two sections by a line perpendicular to them, but with the semicircle at the top of the intersection the third, sixth and ninth of these lines are marked with a cross where they intersect with the vertical line. Below these lines is a wide space with a horizontal crack dividing it. In the center of the tablet is a set of 5 parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semicircle at the intersection of the bottom-most horizontal line and the single vertical line. It is a slab of white marble 149 cm (59 in) long, 75 cm (30 in) wide, and 4.5 cm (2 in) thick, on which are 5 groups of markings. ![]() This Greek abacus saw use in Achaemenid Persia, the Etruscan civilization, Ancient Rome and, until the French Revolution, the Western Christian world.Ī tablet found on the Greek island Salamis in 1846 AD (the Salamis Tablet), dates back to 300 BC, making it the oldest counting board discovered so far. The Greek abacus was a table of wood or marble, pre-set with small counters in wood or metal for mathematical calculations. A play by Alexis from the 4th century BC mentions an abacus and pebbles for accounting, and both Diogenes and Polybius mention men that sometimes stood for more and sometimes for less, like the pebbles on an abacus. Also Demosthenes (384 BC–322 BC) talked of the need to use pebbles for calculations too difficult for your head. The earliest archaeological evidence for the use of the Greek abacus dates to the 5th century BC. Under the Parthian, Sassanian and Iranian empires, scholars concentrated on exchanging knowledge and inventions with the countries around them – India, China, and the Roman Empire, when it is thought to have been exported to other countries. Persianĭuring the Achaemenid Empire, around 600 BC the Persians first began to use the abacus. However, wall depictions of this instrument have not been discovered. Archaeologists have found ancient disks of various sizes that are thought to have been used as counters. The use of the abacus in Ancient Egypt is mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus, who writes that the Egyptians manipulated the pebbles from right to left, opposite in direction to the Greek left-to-right method. It is the belief of Old Babylonian scholars such as Carruccio that Old Babylonians "may have used the abacus for the operations of addition and subtraction however, this primitive device proved difficult to use for more complex calculations". Some scholars point to a character from the Babylonian cuneiform which may have been derived from a representation of the abacus. ![]() ![]() ![]() The period 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system. The user of an abacus is called an abacist. The preferred plural of abacus is a subject of disagreement, with both abacuses and abaci in use. Greek ἄβαξ itself is probably a borrowing of a Northwest Semitic, perhaps Phoenician, word akin to Hebrew ʾābāq (אבק), "dust" (or in post-Biblical sense meaning "sand used as a writing surface"). Whereas the table strewn with dust definition is popular, there are those that do not place credence in this at all and in fact state that it is not proven. 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 came from Greek ἄβαξ abax which means something without base, and improperly, any piece of rectangular board or plank. 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.
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