Talk:Abacus

Editing Needed

The Neurological analysis section was written by a nonnative speaker and contains spelling and grammar errors. Moreover, their interpretations of studies and use of scientific terms are suspect. This section would greatly benefit from review by someone with a familiarity with neuroscience. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:401:101:2A40:7443:EBEB:3D20:16C3 (talk) 00:39, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Animated example?

It would be useful, if one can be found (or created), to add an animated example of a calculation with the abacus. Pol098 (talk) 18:11, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Example of use

It might be useful to add an explained example of use for a simple calculation. Pol098 (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Western Abacus

What kind of abacus would the first person to write the word down in 1387 England have recognized? Would it just have been a Roman or Greek abacus? How long did Europe (and post-Columbian America) use abacuses? I don't think I remember seeing them in movies from a hundred years ago; were they already gone before modern, inexpensive calculators? The only abacus in the article not associated with a specific culture is the one for schoolchildren, and as a child I remember being told those were simplified from the real thing. Similarly, I believe the abacus was for a long time very important to the Middle East, and according to the lede is still in use in Africa. If anyone has info (and sources) to fill some of these gaps, it'd help the article greatly! Also, quick side note while I'm here, the article on algorist has a different version of the picture at the head of the article, maybe one would be preferable to the other? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.81.227.125 (talk) 16:23, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Oldest history

@Justinkunimune, I removed the claim that "Abacuses and similar instruments were originally invented to keep tallies in the era before written numbers." I don't think this was supported by the listed source, and it seems very hard to validate, to the extent that readers can even interpret its meaning at all. We have very limited evidence about exactly what kind of counting systems people used before the past few thousand years, and it's not clear what a "similar instrument" includes. For example: is a bone with a bunch of notches in it an "instrument" or a "written number"? Kind of both.

What would be worth discussing more here is what we know or can speculate with some evidence about the oldest counting boards in mesopotamia, and maybe a bit about the evolution of the number and metrology systems there. My understanding is that one hypothesis is that people did calculations and recorded quantities with piles of clay tokens, where tokens of different shapes and sizes represented different numbers or quantities, and then later started keeping the tokens in clay envelopes and marking the outside of the envelopes with the contents, originally by just impressing the tokens into the clay, but later by abstracted symbols which eventually evolved into cuneiform writing. (Compare https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/from-accounting-to-writing/ and Denise Schmandt-Besserat#Criticisms.) At some point the various inconsistent and arbitrary metrological systems were partially unified into a base-60 system, which eventually involved some kind of abacus (i.e. counting board) where a uniform type of token could be used to represent different quantities based on its place. It would be great if someone could track down the best scholarship about this topic and make a (very compressed) summary, including some indication of the fragmentary evidence we have about those counting boards. –jacobolus (t) 21:26, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

That's fair, I didn't read that source very closely. On a closer reading I agree that what I wrote was too strong. It would be great to see something more detailed and better researched about ancient abacus history in the article. Justin Kunimune (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2026 (UTC)