The Computer History
The Evolution Of The Abacus

The Abacus - history timeline:

This era in fact could be assumed as starting point for the invention and evolution of computers although it is hard to believe it.

The timeline can be traced through different civilizations, each time being modified and upgraded along its path towards our era.

2700BC – 2300BC: Mesopotamia: This period saw the appearance of the Sumerian Abacus, a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their hexadecimal number system

Ancient Egypt : The Greek Historian Crabertotous writes that abaci (plural form) were used by the Ancient Egyptian totally opposite to the way the Greeks used it. Archeologists have found ancient disks of various sizes that are thought to have been used as counters.

Persia: During the Achaemenid Persian Empire, around 600 BC, Iranians first began to use it. Scholars concentrated on exchanging knowledge and inventions with the neighboring countries – India, China and the Roman Empire.

Ancient Greek: The use of abaci by the Greek dates back to the 5th Century BC. It had a wooden frame with wooden or metal beads used for mathematical calculations. The Greek abaci saw use in Ancient Rome and, until the French Revolution, the Western world.

Ancient Chinese Abacus
Courtesy image: Wikipedia

China: The earliest known written documentation of the Chinese abaci known as “Suanpan” dates to the 14th century AD. The top of Suanpan is called the heaven and the bottom is called the earth.

The Suanpan can be used for functions other than counting. The Suanpan techniques have been developed to multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root and cube root at high speeds.

India: First century sources, predict the knowledge and use of abaci in India. Around the 5th century, Indian clerks were already finding new ways of recording the contents of the abaci. The concept of zero and the decimal point originated from Indian mathematicians. Hindu texts used the term shunya (zero) to indicate the empty column on the abacus.

Ancient Japanese Abacus
Courtesy image: Wikipedia

In Japanese we call it Soroban. The Soroban was imported from China around 1600 AD. It is still manufactured in Japan today. The use of Soroban is still taught in Japanese primary schools as a part of mathematics.

Ancient Russian Abacus
Courtesy image: Wikipedia

Russia: called Schoty, usually has a single slanted deck, with ten beads on each wire except one which has four beads for ¹/₄ ruble fractions. The use of abaci were taught in most schools until the 1990s. Today, it is replaced by the use of calculators.

Abaci in today's world

Modern Abacus : Abacus used in Schools
Courtesy image: Wikipedia

Abacus in Schools:

Around the world, abaci are being used in pre-schools and elementary schools as an aid in teaching the numeral systems and arithmetic.

Today, abaci are constructed on a wooden or bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires and is still used in many parts of the world such as Asia and Africa. Many merchants still prefer the old style of calculations.

I still remember my first computing device that was given to me when I was just a child. I received an Abacus on a wooden frame, one similar to this image. I learned how to count numbers with it. Today, I understand how valuable this item has been to us.