Rare exhibit
Aditya Rishi

MR PROCESSOR "the computer" to Later "the calculator": "Russians used abacus, the Chinese use one and the Japanese have an own version of it; it is surprising how such a tool remained hidden from the West." Later: "Then, you’ll find it more surprising that abacus, probably, went to the East from the West. The Romans, too, were among the early users of abacus." Mr Processor: "Not the Romans! No one uses such a thing anywhere in Rome." Later: "Once, I was taken to London Science Museum, where I saw one of the oldest and the rarest Roman abaci."

Mr Processor: "Romans couldn’t have used abacus; Roman numerals are cumbersome and the Roman’s lack of contribution to mathematics is legendary, because they didn’t have a zero or a place-value system."

Later: "Roman engineers designed and built huge monuments and buildings using abaci and some kind of a place-value system; and used Roman numerals only to record the results. The Roman Empire comprised the largest chunk of the world population, then. The roads that the Romans built are still being used. Surely, all this must have required complex calculations, which couldn’t have been done using only Roman numerals. The empire survived due to trade; and trade survived because of counting-boards and hand-abaci. Since the Romans used their numerals only to record results, and since Roman numerals are positively definitive, there was no need for a zero notation, but the Romans, nevertheless, knew the concepts of zero and negative numbers."

"The abacus kept in London Science Museum has a symbol like ‘~3’ on it. The abacus that can fit into your shirt pocket is made of a metal plate and the beads run in slots on it. There are longer slots below the 0 and ~3 positions; and five beads in the lower slot of the 0 position, two beads in the lower slot of the ~3 position and no slot above the ~3 position. The units in the 0 position are 1/12 of the I position, and the units in the ~3 position are 1/3 of the 0 position, so, the peculiar 3 character, most likely, represents 1/3. The present symbol for 3 came from the Roman symbol for 1/3."

"The Russian abacus was far better and simpler. Did people on Mars ever use abacus?" says the computer. (To be continued; write at The Tribune or adityarishi99@yahoo.co.in)