Close to Home by John McPherson for October 03, 2015

A good abacus operator is as fast or faster than a calculator.

At least they are trying to do business. Every time I have encountered someplace with computers on the fritz, they won’t sell anything!

this is abacus we depend too much on electricity

It’ll still be faster than common core math.

Arrrh, I were taken abacus.

Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Sharp made electronic calculators with an abacus attached to the side. Since transistor calculators were pretty new, a lot of people — especially bankers — didn’t trust that they worked. The idea was that someone could use the calculator, then use the abacus to verify the result.

Here’s an example of one:http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102626585

Kids in Japan still learn the soroban—mine did less than 10 years ago.

actually faster than some computers.