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Counting Board
The counting board is the precursor of the abacus, and the earliest known form of a counting device (excluding fingers and other very simple methods). Counting boards were made of stone or wood, and the counting was done on the board with beads, or pebbles etc. Not many boards survive because of the perishable materials used in their construction. The oldest known counting board, the Salamis Tablet (''c.'' 300 BC) was discovered on the Greek island of Salamis in 1899. It is thought to have been used by the Babylonians in about 300 BC and is more of a gaming board than a calculating device. It is marble, about 150 x 75 x 4.5 cm, and is in the Epigraphical Museum in Athens. It has carved Greek letters and parallel grooves. The German mathematician Adam Ries described the use of counting boards in . In the novel ''Wolf Hall'', Hilary Mantel refers to Thomas Cromwell using a counting board in 16th-century England. References See also * Abacus * Calculator An elec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abacus
The abacus (''plural'' abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool which has been used since ancient times. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The exact origin of the abacus has not yet emerged. It consists of rows of movable beads, or similar objects, strung on a wire. They represent digits. One of the two numbers is set up, and the beads are manipulated to perform an operation such as addition, or even a square or cubic root. In their earliest designs, the rows of beads could be loose on a flat surface or sliding in grooves. Later the beads were made to slide on rods and built into a frame, allowing faster manipulation. Abacuses are still made, often as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires. In the ancient world, particularly before the introduction of positional notation, abacuses were a practical calculating tool. The abacus is still used to te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salamis Tablet
The Salamis Tablet is a marble counting board (an early counting device) dating from around 300 BC, that was discovered on the island of Salamis in 1846. A precursor to the abacus, it is thought that it represents an ancient Greek means of performing mathematical calculations common in the ancient world. Pebbles ( la, calculi) were placed at various locations and could be moved as calculations were performed. The marble tablet itself has dimensions of approximately 150 × 75 × 4.5 cm. Discovery Originally thought to be a gaming board, the slab of white marble is currently at the Epigraphical Museum in Athens. Description Five groups of markings appear on the tablet. The three sets of Greek symbols arranged along the left, right and bottom edges of the tablet are numbers from the acrophonic system. In the center of the tablet – a set of five parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semicircle at the intersection of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salamis Island
Salamis ( ; el, Σαλαμίνα, Salamína; grc, label= Ancient and Katharevousa, Σαλαμίς, Salamís) is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about off-coast from Piraeus and about west of central Athens. The chief city, Salamina, lies in the west-facing core of the crescent on Salamis Bay, which opens into the Saronic Gulf. On the eastern side of the island is its main port, Paloukia, in size second in Greece only to the port of Piraeus. Name The traditional etymology of Salamis derives it from the eponymous nymph Salamis, the mother of Cychreus, the legendary first king of the island. A more modern theory considers "Salamis" to come from the root ''sal'' 'salt' and ''-amis'' 'middle'; thus ''Salamis'' would be the place amid salt water. Other fringe theories have attempted to connect the name to the Semitic root Š-L-M 'health, safety, peace', because of the well-sheltered harbor, but have been for the most part rejected by the academic community. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epigraphical Museum
The Epigraphical Museum ( el, Επιγραφικόν μουσείον) of Athens, Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ..., is unique in Greece and the largest of its kind in the world. Its collection comprises 14,078, mostly Greek, inscriptions, which cover the period from early historical times to the Late Roman period, primarily in Greece. It is situated in the south wing of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It comprises an internal and external courtyard (atrium), a lobby, eleven rooms, a large hypostyle Pi-shaped corridor, a gallery, offices, a laboratory for the conservation of inscribed stone monuments and lavatories. Only the courtyards, lobby and four rooms are open to the public, while the rest is reserved for researchers. A full photographic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. It was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political influence on the European continent—particularly Ancient Rome. In modern times, Athens is a large cosmopolitan metropolis and central to economic, financial, industrial, maritime, political and cultural life in Gre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Ries
Adam Ries (17 January 1492 – 30 March 1559) was a German mathematician. He is also known by the name Adam Riese. Life Almost nothing is known about Ries' childhood, youth and education. The exact year of his birth is not known. The caption on the only known contemporary portrait of the mathematician reads: ANNO 1550 ADAM RIES SEINS ALTERS IM LVIII. So apparently he was in his 58th year of age at the time of the picture, which was made in 1550. From this it can be deduced that he was born in 1492 or 1493. The location of his birth, Staffelstein, can be determined with certainty, since he gives information about himself in the preface to his book, ''Coß''. His father was the owner of the mill there, Contz Ries, and his mother, Eva Kittler, was his father's second wife. The first decades after Ries' birth are not documented, so it is not known which schools he attended. There is also no information about his studies in the matriculation registers of the universities. The firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolf Hall
''Wolf Hall'' is a 2009 historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate, named after the Seymour family's seat of Wolfhall, or Wulfhall, in Wiltshire. Set in the period from 1500 to 1535, ''Wolf Hall'' is a sympathetic fictionalised biography documenting the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII through to the death of Sir Thomas More. The novel won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012, ''The Observer'' named it as one of "The 10 best historical novels". The book is the first in a trilogy; the sequel ''Bring Up the Bodies'' was published in 2012. The last book in the trilogy is '' The Mirror and the Light'' (2020), which covers the last four years of Cromwell's life. Summary In 1500, Thomas Cromwell, a young boy roughly 15 years of age, runs away from home because his abusive father nearly beats him to death. He decides to seek his fortune in France as a soldier. By 1527 th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hilary Mantel
Dame Hilary Mary Mantel ( ; born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, '' Every Day Is Mother's Day'', was released in 1985. She went on to write 12 novels, two collections of short stories, a personal memoir, and numerous articles and opinion pieces. Mantel won the Booker Prize twice: the first was for her 2009 novel ''Wolf Hall'', a fictional account of Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the court of Henry VIII, and the second was for its 2012 sequel ''Bring Up the Bodies''. The third instalment of the Cromwell trilogy, '' The Mirror and the Light'', was longlisted for the same prize. Early life Hilary Mary Thompson was born on 6 July 1952 in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers, and raised as a Roman Catholic in the mill village of Hadfield where she attended St Charles Roman Catholic Primary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Cromwell
Thomas Cromwell (; 1485 – 28 July 1540), briefly Earl of Essex, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charges for the execution. Cromwell was one of the most powerful proponents of the English Reformation, and the creator of true English governance. He helped to engineer an annulment of the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn. Henry failed to obtain the approval of Pope Clement VII for the annulment in 1533, so Parliament endorsed the king's claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, giving him the authority to annul his own marriage. Cromwell subsequently charted an evangelical and reformist course for the Church of England from the unique posts of Vicegerent in Spirituals and Vicar-general (the two titles refer to the same position). During his rise to power, Cromwell made many e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abacus
The abacus (''plural'' abaci or abacuses), also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool which has been used since ancient times. It was used in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. The exact origin of the abacus has not yet emerged. It consists of rows of movable beads, or similar objects, strung on a wire. They represent digits. One of the two numbers is set up, and the beads are manipulated to perform an operation such as addition, or even a square or cubic root. In their earliest designs, the rows of beads could be loose on a flat surface or sliding in grooves. Later the beads were made to slide on rods and built into a frame, allowing faster manipulation. Abacuses are still made, often as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires. In the ancient world, particularly before the introduction of positional notation, abacuses were a practical calculating tool. The abacus is still used to te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calculator
An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized devices became available in the 1970s, especially after the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was developed by Intel for the Japanese calculator company Busicom. Modern electronic calculators vary from cheap, give-away, credit-card-sized models to sturdy desktop models with built-in printers. They became popular in the mid-1970s as the incorporation of integrated circuits reduced their size and cost. By the end of that decade, prices had dropped to the point where a basic calculator was affordable to most and they became common in schools. Computer operating systems as far back as early Unix have included interactive calculator programs such as dc and hoc, and interactive BASIC could be used to do calculations on most 1970s a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
