Saturday, October 15, 2011

History Of Abacus


The origins of the abacus calculators difficult to trace because of something like an abacusis widely known in many cultures around the world. It is said that the abacus was in Babylonand in China around the year 2400 BC and 300 BC. Ancient people count by making the lines and put the stones on the sand which is an early form of a wide range of variation ofthe abacus.

The use of the word abacus dates back in 1387, borrowed the Latin word derived from the word abakos abax which in Greek means "the table calculation." In Greek, the word also means abax tables for drawing geometric shapes on top of dust or sand. Linguistsspeculate that the word comes from the word ābāq abax which in Hebrew means "dust."Another opinion says comes from the word abacus abak which in the Phoenician languagefamily means "sand."

In the application of the abacus, the people made ​​a lot of tips to help speed up the calculation calculations. This type of calculation method using the abacus is called abacuscalculation. By the Ming Dynasty, the abacus calculation is not only applicable to the operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, but also to measure the land,shapes and sizes of various objects.