Question

Explain how an abacus works. How has the abacus influenced the modern computer?

Answer 1

If you have studied about finding place value in mathematics then understanding Abacus will be easy for you.
It is a manual calculator which was used to do basic calculation like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division but very rarely square and cube roots.

There are multiple rows in abacus which are ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, and so on going frm bottom to up.There are bids in each row which represent numbers like 1,2 ,3,....,9. Whenever we need to do any calculation we use abacus by sliding the bids.

For ex: how to add 10 and 2 on abacus.

First row represents ones so slide two bids out of 10 to right for representing "2"
Second row represents tens so slide one bid out of 10 for representing "10"

So, by observing the right side It is "12".

How has the abacus influenced the modern computer?

In modern age Abacus might be outdated but it is still used in many countries for teaching purpose.
Everything starts with calculation. when people needed calculator they invented Abacus but it was a manual calculator, still it was ok but not for complex problems. Now people needed some complex calculation machine and that should be automatic. This necessity was the reason for invention of Computer, which changed with time and became modern computer.

There are many types of abacus and binary abacus is one of them which can be used to understand that how modern computer do calculation on binary level.