Today is the start of the Tuesday, History Of Retail In 100 Objects, series
This weeks object is… The Abacus.
Traders have always needed counting boards of some kind. The earliest versions, which predated the abacus, would have been used by traders at markets. Traders drew lines in the sand with their fingers or a stylus of some kind. They would then place pebbles between those lines to represent numbers. The Abacus – or counting frame – evolved from ancient times, through to the Middle Ages and Modern Times. In 500 BC the early counting boards included The Salamis Tablet, the Ro man Calculi and the hand-abacus. The Roman hand abacus was often made from stone and metal. In the Middle Ages came the Apices, the coin-board, and the Line-board, which date from 5 AD to around 1400 AD. Most were made from wood, and originally the beads on which you counted ran vertically. By the time the system had evolved to Line-boards, the columns ran horizontally. From 1200 AD the abacus evolved into the Chinese suan-pan, the Japanese soroban, and the Russian schoty.
The classic Chinese abacus is the one we are most familiar with. It has two beads on the upper deck and 5 on the lower deck, and is often called the ‘2/5’ abacus. From about 1850 this was replaced with the ‘1/5’ abacus, with one bead on the top deck and five beads on the bottom deck. The Chinese abacus was further adapted by Lee Kai-Chen, and by 1958 the ‘new’ abacus could be found in use, complete with an instruction book. It has more decks top and bottom combining the 1/4 soroban model and the 2/5 suan-pan style. Kai-Chen said it was a “Revolution of Chinese Calculators”. Traders have always needed counting boards of some kind. The earliest version s, which predated the abacus, would have been used by traders at markets. Traders drew lines in the sand with their fingers or a stylus of some kind. They would then place pebbles between those lines to represent numbers. The Abacus – or counting frame – evolved from ancient times, through to the Middle Ages and Modern Times. In 500 BC the early counting boards included The Salamis Tablet, the Roman Calculi and the hand-abacus.
The Roman hand abacus was often made from stone and metal. In the Middle Ages came the Apices, the coin-board, and the Line-board, which date from 5 AD to around 1400 AD. Most were made from wood, and originally the beads on which you counted ran vertically. By the time the system had evolved to Line-boards, the columns ran horizontally. From 1200 AD the abacus evolved into the Chinese suan-pan, the Japanese soroban, and the Russian schoty. The classic Chinese abacus is the one we are most familiar with. It has two beads on the upper deck and 5 on the lower deck, and is often called the ‘2/5’ abacus. From about 1850 this was replaced with the ‘1/5’ abacus, with one bead on the top deck and five beads on the bottom deck. The Chinese abacus was further adapted by Lee Kai-Chen, and by 1958 the ‘new’ abacus could be found in use, complete with an instruction book. It has more decks top and bottom combining the 1/4 soroban model and the 2/5 suan-pan style. Kai-Chen said it was a “Revolution of Chinese Calculators”.
Contribution To Retail History
As the first known calculating mechanism, the abacus enabled merchants and traders to add, subtract, multiply and divide without the use of pebbles, twigs or other ‘representations’. Being liberated to work on larger, more complex calculations was a significant advancement in the earliest days of retail management.
The History Of Retail In 100 Objects Is Available As A Free Podcast
