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an ancient calculating device, consists of a frame with parallel wires on which beads are strung. The Greeks and Romans, as well as earlier civilizations, including possibly ancient Babylon, utilized a method of calculation involving a handful of stones on a flat surface, known as the Latin abacus. This technique persists in more advanced forms such as the Russian schoty and the Japanese soroban, both utilizing bead frames. However, the abacus has been surpassed by the electronic calculator.
In a bead-frame abacus, the wires establish place value. For instance, in the decimal number system, each successive wire, when counted from right to left, signifies ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so forth. Beads are moved to the top of each wire to represent the digits of a specific number. Using a simple decimal abacus as an example, the number 8,493 would be input by sliding three beads on the first wire (three ones), nine beads on the second wire (nine tens), four beads on the third wire (four hundreds), and eight beads on the fourth wire (eight thousands).
Eduhelp Encyclopedia of Science