The abacus is known as China's "fifth great invention" and continues to play a significant role in arithmetic and educational development today. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, mathematician Zhen Luan authored the "Record of Mathematical Techniques," which introduced 14 ancient algorithms, with the abacus being mentioned for the first time. However, as time passed, these ancient calculation tools gradually fell into obscurity. In an effort to recover these lost ancient methods, scholars from both China and abroad dedicated over a century of work, ultimately succeeding in 2002 with the restoration of the "Thirteen Types of Ancient Calculation."
In 1992, Cheng Wenmao successfully deciphered the long-lost "Taiyi Calculation," which had been absent for over a thousand years, and invented the "Taiyi Calculation Chess" to help children easily master addition and subtraction within ten thousand. That same year, he also created the "World Abacus," which could be assembled into different types of abacuses, thereby recreating the lost ancient calculating tools. In 2001, Guan Weidong from Hubei Agricultural University discovered a complete ceramic abacus bead in Jingzhou, pushing the history of existing abacus artifacts in China back by 1,100 years.
In the history of ancient Chinese mathematics, the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" is a significant work that includes 246 problems covering topics such as land division and property distribution. It describes methods for calculations using counting rods, with numbers represented in a decimal system. Around the 8th century, Indian texts began to show the use of dots to represent the number zero. By the 13th century, the Chinese had started using bamboo sticks to solve complex problems. Singaporean mathematician Lin Laiyu believes that the Chinese invented a method to represent numbers 1 to 9 as early as 475 BC, predating similar methods in India and Arabia by a millennium.
These restorations and discoveries not only unveil the secrets of ancient Chinese calculation tools but also provide valuable resources for modern mathematical research.
