Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/these-6-ancient-calculators-were-more-powerful-than-youd-expect/
Most people picture a calculator as something plastic, battery-powered, and decidedly modern. The reality is that human beings have been building sophisticated computing devices for thousands of years, long before electricity was even a concept. Some of these tools were so cleverly engineered that their underlying logic still shows up in the machines we use today.
What’s striking isn’t just that these devices existed. It’s how much they could actually do. Several of them handled operations that, by modern assumptions, shouldn’t have been possible without microchips or at least a printing press. Here are six ancient calculators that deserve far more credit than they typically receive.
The Abacus: More Than Just Beads on a Frame
Abacus-like devices are first attested from ancient Mesopotamia around 2700 B.C., and the tool spread through the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Arabic numeral system. That’s a remarkably long run for any technology. Its staying power wasn’t accidental.
The abacus can be used to perform the mathematical functions of multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, square root, and cube root. That’s a wider range of operations than most people assume. In the ancient world, abacuses were a practical calculating tool, widely used in Europe as late as the 17th century, but fell out of use with the rise of…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-05-17 20:56:00
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