le Abacus

History

It is hard to envision counting without numbers, but there was a time when written numbers did not exist. The earliest devices employed for counting less and more than 10 were human fingers / toes and pebbles/ sea shells/ twigs respectively. When trading in goods of Barter system got replaced by trading in money, invention of portable counting devices became inevitable. Abacus was the first known portable calculating device invented. The word, Abacus is derived from the Greek word “ABAX” meaning the counting board. In the ancient times Abacus was being used by shopkeepers and merchants in Europe, Japan, Korea, China and Russia for making calculations.

Although these days calculators and computers are being popularly used to perform various mathematical functions like additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions or even more complex ones, such as calculating square roots etc., however, Abacuses are still remain a common tool used for making various calculations by merchants, traders of some countries (e.g. Eastern Europe, Russia, China and Africa and North East of India where power supply is not regular). Abacuses are also being widely used by visually impaired people for doing fast calculations.

Why Children should be encouraged to perform calculations using Abacus?

Human body is bilaterally symmetrical having two hands, two legs, two ears, two eyes and two nostrils. Our brain also consists of two cerebral hemispheres interconnected by corpus callous. The left and the right hemispheres in addition to controlling the functioning of the organs situated in the opposite side of the human body are also involved in controlling other body functions eg. Left Hemispheres is involved in analyzing information concerning languages, and sound while right Hemispheres is the seat of intelligence, concentration, imagination, creativity, perception cum visualization and photographic memory. Interestingly 95% of the children prefer to use left side of their brain only.

The arrangement of beads on the abacus forms an image which easily gets stored in the right cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Moreover, the interconnections between two parts of brain gets developed by Abacus based mental arithmetic by stimulating thinking and reasoning. Movement of fingers on abacus while doing calculations with abacus results not only in the better utilization of the right side of brain but also better interconnections and coordination between the two parts of the brain. Dr. Toshio Hayashi, Director, Research Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Illinois-USA,(RIAST), is of the view that more we use of abacus, more will be whole brain development and overall intelligence, thereby creating 'Child Maths Prodigy'.

Advantages of doing calculations by Abacus:

Children should be encouraged to perform calculations using Abacus because of the following resulting benefits :

• Increasing their ability for Visualization…as supported by EEG studies
• Enhancing their ability to recall.
• Increasing their level of Concentration.
• Development of sense of Logical reasoning
• Development of Photographic Memory.