The Abacus is an ancient calculator and the world’s first computing system made simply of wooden beads in a rectangular frame. Back when the Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans were carving out numbers into stone tablets and using pebbles in the sand, somebody out there was inventing abaci, the plural of abacus. Most historians believe the abacus was invented in Central Asia and only later traveled to China (which embraced it and improved on it) and to Europe (which preferred pencil and paper and therefore ignored it).

While there is a Japanese version of the abacus, the soroban, the modern chinese abacus, the suan pan, is to me, more useful given a crossbar that runs horizontally across the abacus dividing the “one” beads or “earth” beads from the 5, 10, 50, etc. beads or the “heaven” beads. If you look carefully at the photograph at the beginning on this blog, you can read the number 628. In the far right (ones) column, one heaven bead and three earth beads are represented. In the column second from the right (tens) you can see that two earth beads are represented which means twenty. Finally, in the third to the right column (hundreds), one heaven and one earth bead are shown giving 500 + 100 or 600 altogether.

There are few books and resources available in the west on how to use an abacus, let alone how to teach mathematics with it. Sluggishly however, the abacus is cropping up in various schools and educational organizations. For example, in Beaverton, Oregon (outside Portland), the Japanese Abacus Math School (JAMS) opened its doors in 2001. JAMS teaches children abaci functions and mental math. Their web site, http://www.jamsportland.com/index.html, says of using the abacus in education:

“Learning the abacus provides all of these skills and abilities. Children who learn the abacus generally achieve higher academic performance in all subjects because of the concentration skills the Abacus teaches them. They are simply more capable of looking at a problem and working it out mentally, before diving in. When this happens they become more confident and successful in all areas.”

With the abacus you can count, add, subtract, multiply and divide. You can also work with square roots and decimals. Lastly, one of the amazing functions you can do with a Chinese abacus is to work with binary numbers since it is separated. For binary applications, only use the top two beads for the (the heaven beads) zero and the one. Using the Chinese abacus for binary functions was invented much later than abaci were, it is merely a delicious by-product. Children in Japan, China, Malaysia and other countries generally begin learning the abacus at age seven (second grade). The abacus is an extremely tactile instrument that can be used in a basic way for young children beginning with counting and in a more sophisticated way as a child grows in his/her understanding of the base ten system and improves upon her/his ability to construct and deconstruct number (i.e. use mental math).

“As in the case of the abacus, a fine grained analysis of the origin and development of instruments may give insight into the dialectic relationship between practice and theory in the construction of mathematical knowledge (Bartolini Bussi & Mariotti, 1999, 1999a), and provide interesting suggestion at the educational level.” (Authored by Maria Alessandra Mariotti in her article, “Influence of technologies advances on students’ math learning.”

If you or someone you know currently uses an abacus in the classroom for teaching mathematics to children, please let me know about your experience. If you’d like to begin but don’t know where, check out the links I’ve posted below. There are books and online tutorials for learning how to use an abacus (then it takes consistent practice to be fluid), there are workbooks for children that give them structured practice and there is a link on where to buy a Chinese abacus.

Books on using the Chinese Abacus:
How to Use a Chinese Abacus: A step by step guide to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, roots and more ($25)
This is the book I want to buy. It has very good reviews and gets into roots and more in depth calculations and explanations.
http://www.amazon.com/CHINESE-ABACUS-step-step-multiplication/dp/184799864X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264619509&sr=1-1

The Abacus: The world’s first computing system: Where it comes from, How it works, and How to use it to perform mathematical feats great and small
This is the book I actually bought because it includes a small working Chinese abacus. Very good beginner book, limited information.
http://www.amazon.com/Abacus-Worlds-Computing-Perform-Mathermatical/dp/031210409X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264619688&sr=1-3

Buy a Chinese Abacus ($6 + $10 shipping)
https://www.chinasprout.com/shop/A948

Teacher Resources:
Online Java Abacus with built-in tutoring:
http://www.tux.org/~bagleyd/java/AbacusApp.html

The Abacus: The Art of Calculating with Beads and more!
http://archives.math.utk.edu/popmath.html

Order Abacus Workbooks
http://www.my-rummy.com/Abacus_for_Primary_School_Children.html
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=abacus+workbook&x=0&y=0