How to use your abacus Reading a number on the abacus. The abacus works on the place value system. Reading it is almost like reading a written numeral. The five beads below the bar each have a value of 1. The two beads above the bar each have a value of 5

Be fore the invention of the written Hindu-Arabic numerical system that is still used worldwide today, ancient mathematicians performed complex calculations using an abacus. The device is thought to have evolved from the system of columns and markers used

When dividing on an abacus, you will put the divisor in the left-most column(s). Leave a couple blank columns to the right, then put the dividend in the columns next to those. The remaining columns to the right will be used to do the work leading to the a