The Abacus Is the Earliest Known Computing Device and the First Hand-Held Calculator

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Abacus Ancient times Middle East

The abacus is a powerful calculating device enabling its user to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It was probably invented in the Middle East, where it began as simple marks in the dirt. In the West, from early Roman times, users calculated with a highly developed “table abacus” that involved manipulating coin-like discs, or “jetons,” on lines drawn on a table or cloth. The table abacus remained in use in parts of Britain and northern Europe until the late 1600s.

In the East, several Asian civilizations used a technique similar to the table abacus until about 1200 AD when the more familiar wire and bead abacus was created in China. As late as 1946, the US Army newspaper Stars and Stripes sponsored a contest pitting a Japanese abacus against an electric calculator. The abacus won.

Photo Caption: Allegorical contest between Boethius and Pythagoras, with Typhus Arithmeticae as referee Photo credit: Margarita philosophica, Gregor Reisch, 1503. Credit: Erwin Tomash