Luxurious Japanese Soroban - Wooden Abacus with 17 Columns

Luxurious wooden Japanese abacus – soroban with 17 rods.

Description:

• Number of digits: 17
• Material: wood, metal rods
• Dimensions (L x W x H): approx. 35x9.5x2cm (13.78x3.74x0.79 in)

Soroban is an abacus developed in Japan. It is based on the traditional Chinese suanpan, which was brought to Japan in the 14th century. Similar to the suanpan, the soroban is still used today, despite the proliferation of practical and widely available pocket calculators.

The soroban features an odd number of columns or rods on which beads are placed: one of the beads has a value of 5, known as go-dama ("five-bead"), and four beads, each with a value of 1, are called ichi-dama ("one-bead"). The beads on the rod are separated by a grid, known as the counting grid.

The number of rods on a soroban is always odd and never less than nine. Basic models typically have 13 rods, but their number on practically usable and common models often ranges around 21, 23, 27, or even 31, allowing for calculations with multi-digit numbers or the display of several different numbers at once. Each rod represents a single digit, thus allowing for the display of multi-digit numbers either in singular form or during numerical operations.

A very good guide in English on how to use the soroban can be found here: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Abacus

Many video tutorials (in English) on using the soroban can be found on YouTube.