By sbeard
The abacus is the earliest stage of a calculator. The calculator has two different sets of beads, the heaven beads and the earth beads. The top beads are called heaven beads and the bottom beads are called the earth beads. The heaven beads are worth five and the earth beads are worth one. The Abacus is still used by traders, clerks, and merchants in Asia and Africa. Why people don’t just use a calculator is beyond me. People who use the abacus are called abacist.
• History of the abacus
• How the abacus relates to the computer
• How to use an abacus
History of the abacus
The abacus was made somewhere around 5000 years ago by the Chinese. Nobody knows who invented the abacus. The abacus started as a stone tablet with lines and pebbles. People then made the abacus portable by a smaller square with wires and beads like we see today. The abacus is a very old and insufficient, like the encyclopedia. For some reason people still use that abacus even though there are calculators, and for some reason people still use an encyclopedia even though there’s Google.
How the abacus relates to the computer
The abacus only slightly relates to the computer. The abacus relates to the computer because of base numbers. The abacus is done by base ten and the computer is done in base two. In the end all the computer really does is calculate. Everything that you have that is powered by electricity has two commands, off and on. So the computer does things by base two. The letter A has eight yes or no’s The letter A is 0100 0001. That in base two means sixty-five. Below is a chart of base two. Now I can
| One hundred twenty eight | Sixty-four | Thirty-two | Sixteen | Eight | Four | Two | One |
explain base how to put down the number A you need to go through eight on or off’s. Above is eight different numbers in base two. Now the 0100 0001 should make more sense, because there is one on or off for each number up there. Base two goes much higher than that but the people who invented the computer decided that eight was enough. As you can see there is one sixty-four and one one, which equals sixty-five, thus the letter A. And that is how the abacus relates to the computer.
How to use an abacus
Let’s say that you want to put down the number fifteen thousand four hundred sixty two. You the beads on the far right and move two of the earth beads up, then you would take the beads to the left of that row and move on of the heaven beads down and one of the earth beads up, then to left of that row you would pull four of the earth ones up, then to the left of that row and push one of the heaven beads up. And the left of that row you would pull one of earth beads ups. The abacus unlike a calculator doesn’t actually do the math it just says what the number is.
