Abacus is an ancient calculating device, also known to be the first computer. In terms of structure, it has a frame with beads which are used in counting. There are hundreds of styles of Abacus available across the globe. Infact there are museums which showcases the huge variety of Abacus developed over a period of time. The abacus also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Arabic numeral system. The exact origin of the abacus is still unknown. The abacus is also used to explain how computers manipulate numbers. The abacus shows how numbers, letters, and signs can be stored in a binary system on a computer. The binary abacus device consists of a series of beads on parallel wires arranged in three separate rows.
The particular type of Abacus that we use in UCMAS is called Soroban. The reason why we use this is, it works on Base – 10 System, which is similar to the concept we use in our day to day conventional Mathematics Education. The Soroban is an abacus developed in Japan. It is derived from the ancient Chinese Suanpan, imported to Japan in the 14th century. The Soroban is still used today, despite the proliferation of practical and affordable pocket electronic calculators. Each column of the Japanese abacus can represent a number from 0 to 9. When the abacus is set to 0, all bottom deck beads are aligned at the bottom and the top deck beads are aligned at the top. Within a single column, each bottom deck bead is worth 1 and the top deck one is worth 5.
The roots of Soroban can date back to Abacus in ancient Greece. It was a simple system to calculate; fill the shallow box with the sand, draw some lines in that sand, and putting pebbles at the top of these lines. Ancient Greek put this box on the table and they called it Abacus. It became portable in Rome; it’s considered it was introduced into China and it became the prototype of Soroban we see today. In the Heian period (794-1185), people used to exchange goods without using money. Only among the court nobles, we can see a sign of calculation as a part of a game as they were learning one’s multiplication table up to 10’s. In the 1570s, Suanpan, the Chinese calculation tablet introduced in Japan. The education of calculation began with it. Actually, the first users who started using Japanese Abacus are Samurai class. Why? War needs calculation. The distribution of soldiers, getting supplies, buying arms required the calculation. Without precise calculation ability, you couldn’t win the war. Abacus learning is interesting, exciting and also a lifelong core skill'