Counting rods (simplified Chinese: 筹; traditional Chinese: 籌; pinyin: chóu; Japanese: 算木, sangi) are small bars, typically 3–14 cm long, used by mathematicians for calculation in ancient China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. They are placed either horizontally or vertically to represent any number and any fraction.
The written forms based on them are called rod numerals. They are a true positional numeral system with digits for 1-9 and a blank for 0, from the Warring states period to the 16th century.
Read more about Counting Rods: History, Using Counting Rods, Rod Numerals
Famous quotes containing the words counting and/or rods:
“Love is sinister,
is mean to us in separation;
makes our thin bodies thinner.
This fellow Death
lacks mercy
and is good at counting our days.
And Master,
you, too, are subject
to the plague of jealousy
so think:
how could womenfolk,
soft as sprouts,
live like this?”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)
“The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)