abacus

Calculators, cars and probably candles and the abacus were considered a menace to society.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 7, 2025

Recently, a lovely and well-meaning friend texted me one of those trending articles that make you want to trade your smartphone for an abacus and never speak of the internet again.

From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2024

For example, you can add numbers perfectly using an abacus, in which wooden beads are pushed back and forth to represent arithmetic operations.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 30, 2023

Ms Truss, a former Treasury minister, accused her old department of promoting an "abacus economics" and insisted there needed to be a greater focus on stimulating economic growth.

From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2023

By around 300 BC the Babylonians had started using two slanted wedges to represent an empty space, an empty column on the abacus.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife

Other abaci emoji also have issues, but Apple’s is the worst offender And in the name of fairness, some abaci from different phone manufacturers are also off, historically speaking, but Apple’s is the worst offender.

From The Verge ● May 26, 2019

On the other hand, Samsung, Twitter, and WhatsApp’s abaci are also incorrect.

From The Verge ● May 26, 2019

All three brands also use Western-style abaci, but with seven, six, and five beads, respectively, making them little more than depictions of toys.

From The Verge ● May 26, 2019

Last week Harvard University dedicated its new Computation Laboratory, devoted solely to overgrown abaci, their design, construction, care & feeding.

From Time Magazine Archive

One is cluttered with newspapers and tattlers and scandal sheets, another with petit-hourglasses and abaci.

From "The Belles" by Dhonielle Clayton

Much of the buzz around the subject in recent years has been about the development of powerful quantum computers which, the narrative goes, will make our fastest supercomputers seem like abacuses by comparison.

From BBC ● Mar. 2, 2025

The floating ships in the fantasy role-playing game Honkai: Star Rail are populated with traders, gourmets and literati who surf their texts on jade abacuses.

From New York Times ● Oct. 22, 2023

Sports are represented in the form of tiny windsurfers and badminton shuttlecocks, and he has acquired some oddities, like helicopters, pencil stubs, abacuses and matchbooks.

From New York Times ● Jul. 21, 2016

Behind him are displayed a 1,500-year-old sake pot, a vertical wall of abacuses and various objets d'art befitting a place walking distance from Little Tokyo.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2015

When Bailey was six and I a year younger, we used to rattle off the times tables with the speed I was later to see Chinese children in San Francisco employ on their abacuses.

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou