#Chinese abacus hong kong portable

#Chinese abacus hong kong portable

Companies in Japan, Europe, and the United States began producing light, portable calculators suitable for individual use, which quickly spread across the developed world. But the arrival of cheap electronic calculators in the 1970s dealt a heavy blow to this ancient device. In China, zhusuan competitions between students using the abacus remained popular throughout this time. This type of abacus‐based mental arithmetic is also thought to improve attention span, memory, and mental capability. By using an abacus, children in the east developed a clearer, more concrete grasp of figures. In the west, children typically learned mathematics through memorization, engaging with figures in the abstract. Research has shown that this method of instruction greatly improved their mathematical abilities and comprehension, enabling them to outperform their western counterparts. Moving into the modern eraįor centuries, schoolchildren in the Chinese‐speaking world, South Korea, and Japan learned zhusuan in their mathematics class. The most popular style of Japanese abacus (soropan) is the 1/4, which is still manufactured there.īy the end of the Ming dynasty, the book spread to Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, becoming the global foundation for developing the abacus. Each year a celebration is held there on 8 August to remember him. It reached Japan in 1600, pioneering the use of the abacus in that country. With more than 100 editions printed around the world, Cheng’s book continued to influence mathematics and promote the spread of zhusuan for centuries. The book, which analyses 595 problems over 12 chapters, played a pivotal role in systematising and popularising zhusuan. He published General Source of Computational Methods, an arithmetic guide for the abacus, in 1592. One of the most famous Chinese scholars of the abacus was Cheng Dawei (1533–1606). This was the 2/5 abacus and remained in common use until the 1850s when a 1/4 abacus went into production. The upper deck, known as heaven, carried two beads per rod or wire, each with a value of five, The lower deck, known as earth, carried five beads per rod or wire, each with a value of one. Beads were attached to each wire or rod, organized into an upper and lower deck. Suanpan were typically constructed of bamboo with seven or more fixed wires or wooden rods affixed to metal reinforcements. Close-up of an abacus | Photo by António Sanmarful It was the most advanced number system in the world at the time, enabling calculations on number rods, and eventually, on suanpan. The earliest surviving evidence of mathematics dates from the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BC) in the form of numbers scratched into tortoise shells. Zhusuan likely predates the invention of the decimal system by Indian mathematicians between the first and fourth centuries AD, and builds on a long tradition of mathematical innovation in China. Published in 190 AD, the book also introduced zhusuan as a method for performing mathematical calculations with an abacus. The earliest record of the Chinese abacus, known as suanpan (counting tray), is an illustration from Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures by Xu Yue.

Many early civilisations, including the Babylonians and Egyptians, utilised a rudimentary form of the abacus, but it was the Persians who exported the abacus to Europe and Asia. The abacus is the oldest and most widely used tool for calculation in the world, appearing in Mesopotamia as early as 2700– 2300 BC. In 2013, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), recognising the broad cultural impact and symbolic resonance of zhusuan-and by extension, the abacus-officially listed Chinese zhusuan as an intangible cultural heritage element. While the origin of the abacus itself remains unknown, China can claim the best and most widespread method for using it: zhusuan. Many factors contribute to the staying power of this ancient device – it’s cheap to produce, easy to use, and requires no electricity-but perhaps the most significant is the same factor that has cemented its place in Chinese culture.

Kong and Macao, particularly those selling traditional Chinese medicine, use abacuses, and it is much the same in Chinatowns in North America. The abacus has been used in China for millennia, and although its popularity has declined since the invention of hand‐held electronic calculators in the 1970s, it remains in widespread use among traders and clerks in Asia and Africa, in shops, restaurants and street stalls. The abacus has been a tool of calculation widely used in China for nearly 2,000 years, and it is still alive in Macao.