CHINESE ABACUS

Introduction
Abacus (also known as SUANPAN in Chinese meaning counting tray) is a
calculating and numerical recording tool. The earliest known written
documentation of Chinese Abacus dates back to 2nd century BC. Possible
origin of Abacus could be Chinese counting rods, which operated with
Decimal system lacking concept of zero. Up until calculators and teller
machines became so cheap, they were widely used.
Composition of Chinese Abacus
Most common type of Chinese Abacus has 13 vertical wires, with 7 beads on
each wire. The wires and beads are in rectangular frame. The beads are
usually rounded and made of hardwood. There is a horizontal divider within
frame, so 7 beads on each wire are separated into 2 beads above the divider
(Heavenly beads) and 5 beads below the divider (Earthly beads). The 2
Heavenly beads represent five units and 5 Earthly beads represent one unit.
Chinese abacuses are designed to allow for hexadecimal computation. Each
rod has a decimal value: the first, ones; the second, tens; the third,
hundreds; and etc.
Mechanism

If a bead is positioned next to central division or towards it, it means its

value is activated. Example- If you want to record a number 8, move one of
Heavenly and three of Earthly beads towards the divider. The Suanpan can
be reset to the starting position instantly by a quick movement along the
horizontal axis to spin all the beads away from the horizontal beam at the
center. Efficient Suanpan techniques have been developed to
do multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root and cube
root operations at high speed.