Computing with the Abacus

The Abacus is among one of the oldest known calculating devices known to man. It is often among the lineup of devices in the evolution of the modern computer. While in some places the Abacus is just a relic that sits in the museum, it is still used in some parts of Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia and China.

Ongoing Competitions

Organizers	Date
Cognito Abacus	15 th of May 2022
Right Guide(India)	30 th December 2022
Abakus Olympiad	26 th November 2022
CAA Association	13thNovember 2022

The few examples of ongoing competitions involving the use of Abacus listed above is aimed at helping the reader appreciate the fact that while the educational systems in your area may not include the use of Abacus in curriculum, the Abacus itself is not as obsolete as it looks.

Relevance

Can we learn anything from the Abacus or would it just be a waste of time to learn how to use this almost obsolete calculating device?
If I can't find a truly satisfying answer to this question, I will simply conclude that "there is no knowledge that is not power"
Just for the sake of curiosity, can an Abacus solve the problem displayed above? And the answer is "yes" it can, and the one used here can solve a problem that is up to a million showing that it is not a simple counting stick. The maximum digit that can be feed on the Abacus we will be using for this reason is 9,999,999.
(And that is Nine Millon, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety nine.) And this is because the Abacus we are using here has only seven columns, but the more columns the better.
Using the Abacus will also help children learn the place values of numbers. While I will love to adopt this as part of my rationale for today's lesson, I will also love to start the lesson at once.

The Abacus

The Abacus is basically made of a wooden frame and beads held by some strings or rods in a way that allows the beads to slide freely. Based on the type we will be using for this exercise, each rod holds five beads.
The beads are separated into two sections by a reconning bar that horizontally cuts across the Abacus, the upper section holds one bead on each rod while the lower section will hold four beads on each rod.
_{The basic parts of an Abacus}

Computations

• When reading or computing with the Abacus, only the upper beads pulled down to touch the reconning bar or the lower Beads pulled up to touch the reconning bar are read.
• Any rod with no bead(s) touching the reconning bar is read as a zero.
• Each of the upper beads (in this case the yellow beads) when moved to touch the reconning bar stands for a value of five.
• The lower beads (which are green in this case) once each is moved to touch the reconning bar stands for a value of one.
• Each rod or column of beads stands for a place value and the sample we are using here has 7 columns which will represent M, HTH, TTH, TH, H, T, U and the more the columns the better.

In the example above, the unit was moved two points to the left to accommodate two desimal places and was indicated with a dot.

You should watch this video where I demonstrate how to solve both addition and subtraction using the Abacus.

How it is used [Video]

This is a YouTube video I created to help you learn how to use an Abacus to perform basic Addition and Subtraction