Russian revolution
Aditya Rishi

LATER "the calculator" to Mr Processor "the computer": "You can’t find a difference between a Japanese computer and an Indian computer, but abacus changes its shape and character according to the country where it is used. Chinese abacus is different from Greek or Russian abacus."

"Russians call their abacus schoty. Invented in the 17th century, this horizontal abacus is still in use in Russia. This abacus is operated by sliding the beads right-to-left. Its principle is based on a pair of human hands."

"Hold out both your hands in front of you, palms facing out, and you will find that your thumbs are beside each other and two sets of four fingers spread out from there. On the schoty as well, each row has two sets of four beads of the same colour on the outside, representing the two sets of four fingers and the two inner beads of a different colour than the rest, representing the two thumbs."

"The home position for the beads is on the right hand side. The bottom row represents the 1’s place, the next row up represents the 10’s place, then 100’s, and so on. Counting on the schoty is similar to counting on one’s fingers. The beads move from right to left: 1 to 10, and then carrying up to the next row. Schotys with 20 beads in each row originated in Georgia (now, south of Russia). Georgians counted with their hands as well as the feet. They also used their toes to move beads on the rods. The metal rods, on which, the beads slide, have a slight curvature, which stops the counted beads from accidentally sliding back to the home-position."

"Abacus is a flexible tool: it can have any base, 5, 8, 20, 10 or any other number, so, its principle inspired the creation of first computers." Mr Processor (cutting in): "Now, you are putting this Abacus Abu into my gene pool." Later: "Who am I to put it in your gene pool, when it is already there. It has some limitations, but it can constantly be modified to see that the limitations are removed. A multi-deck abacus is used to perform complex operations like finding out square roots or cube roots. Romans carved abaci on stones." (To be continued; write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in)