Being a student of mathematics, you might be and rather must be acquainted about the facts, importance and history of abacus. Abacus plays a vital role in developing our basics which in turn is beneficial for our future. Most of us know that abacus is a counting tool and helps in developing knowledge about simple mathematics calculations. But most of us do not give importance to the historical importance and significance of abacus.
History of Abacus
You must have no knowledge about this, but the history of abacus has been controversial and is controversial till date. It has gathered many speculations all over the globe. Most of the famous mathematicians have given their personal views on it and thus making it more controversial. No formal explanation is written in paper as who was the inventor of abacus and when was it invented. Thus it is very difficult for the general people to understand this great confusion. Before we discuss about the history of abacus we will discuss some of the most interesting facts about this wonderful device.
As we have said earlier that there is a lot of controversy surrounding abacus and about its meaning. The basic definition of abacus is that it is a counting device that was used in earlier days to do basic counting. But this definition is not appropriate, the basic fundamentals of abacus is much different. On the counting board, the moving of the stones or beads amongst the carved or painted lines were used to perform calculations.
How were Calculations done?
Many people confuse between abacus and the counting board. They associate abacus with the history of computers, identifying it as the first ever computer that was invented. However, this relationship does not have enough ground and support to back it up. Abacus only acted as a counting aid while the human brain performed all the mathematical calculations. However, this is different in case of a computer of calculator. You just need to feed data to the machine, and the calculations are performed by the device.
The number system has made it very easy to do counting but it has come into being few decades back, it is a much modern procedure. Centuries ago fingers were used to do these calculations. But soon they faced problems in counting large numbers. Thus this is how abacus came into being. Before the invention of abacus many other similar devices were used to do counting. For example, the Babylonians in 300 BC used the
Salamis tablet.
The Chinese are thought to be the inventor of the abacus. According to some research it is found that is was invented by the Chinese in the 13th century. Back then the abacus was known as the suan-pan or 2/5 abacus. It has two segments, the upper segment has two stones or beads and the lower segment has five stones or beads. As time passed by the basic device went through many changes and today it has been reinvented by different countries and are known as the Korean abacus or Japanese abacus.
Mike is a freelance writer who writes on different topics such as technology, business, finance, gadgets. He holds bachelor’s degree in electronics. He has published more than 500 articles about various topics, including Maths and abacus
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