FROM ABACUS TO MODERN COMPUTER - there is nothing new under the sun

Before the advent of electronic calculators, and certainly before the advent of modern computers, there was Abacus. Abacus is a simple calculator made from beads and wires, widely used by merchants and traders in Asia and Africa. The history of Abacus stretches back more than 2500 years; in fact, Abacus remained the fastest form of calculator until the 17^th Century.

The Abacus

Nearly every ancient civilization had its own Abacus counting frame. The use of Abacus in ancient Egypt was mentioned by the Greek historian Herotodus, who said that the Egyptians manipulated the pebbles from right to left.

In the West, Leonardo da Vinci was probably the first person to attempt to design an Abacus machine (Circa. 1452-1519). However, Gottfried Liebniz was the first person to attempt to use the Abacus machine for binary calculations; turning the machine into a rudimentary logic gate. (Circa. 1646-1716). In his book “Liebniz and China,” Franklin Perkins expressed to his readers how fascinated Liebniz was with the African and the Chinese I Ching binary geomancy (i.e., Ifa) that he obsessively pleaded with the absolute ruler of France, Louis XIV of France, to invade Egypt, having realized that the knowledge of binary geomancy was salient to executing all four basic mathematical operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing) on his Abacus machine. It was said that Napoleon’s failed invasion of Egypt in 1798 was a late implementation of Leibniz’s plan.

It would take almost another 300 years for early computer scientists to fully understand how Liebniz’s Abacus machine works, and how it could be adapted into a modern computing system we are now familiar with today.

Computers truly came into their own as a great invention of the 20^th Century, but they are essentially a modern day Abacus machine – there is nothing new under the sun.