(Computer History) - Thomas Wright's 1861 essay on the medieval abacus

[Alan Sondheim]

(Computer History) - Thomas Wright's 1861 essay on the medieval abacus


See the images below. The description of an abacus tradition, complete
with different names/graphemes for 0-9, is fascinating. The images
indicate it may have been something qualitatively different from the
abacus as we know it - perhaps to the base 10 itself.

This material, I think, should be better known. The book is: Essays on
Archaeological Subjects, And on Various Questions Connected with the
History of Art, Science, and Literature in the Middle Ages., by Thomas
Wright, John Russell Smith, 1861. The essay: On the Abacus or Mediaeval
System of Arithmetic.

Please note the images might not be up longer than a week or so; space
is limited.

http://www.asondheim.org/abac1.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac2.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac3.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac4.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac5.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac6.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac7.jpg
http://www.asondheim.org/abac8.jpg