Who Invented Abacus?
The basic need that led to the development of this device was the need to compute larger calculations. It is believed that the earliest invention of Abacus occurred in Sumeria by ancient Mesopotamians around 2700 to 2300 B.C.E. using a base 60 system, but the oldest known abacus is the Salamis Tablet in Greece in 300 B.C.E. Data shows that Old Babylonian scholars have used this abacus to do addition and subtraction. The Greeks used abacus in the 5th century B.C. It can be described as having a wooden or marble frame consisting of metal counters. The Chinese abacus had more than 7 rods and generally consisted of an odd number of rods. The hard wooden beads are arranged in two parts namely the upper and the lower part, there were two beads in each rod in the upper part and five beads in each rod in the bottom parts. In the 1st century AD, there were some advancements in the Roman Abacus like the addition of eight long grooves consisting of up to five beads and eight shorter grooves having no or one bead each. The abacus was widely used in Ancient India as well and has been mentioned in older manuscripts.
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