Maybe I’m not remembering how they work correctly, but I thought sliderules and abacus…es…abacuses? abacii?.. just helped you repeat operations and keep track of the work you’d done, rather than executing mathematical functions for you
Sliderules definitely do operations for you. The basic multiplication sliderule uses logarithmic scales to do multiplication by addition. Abaci (it is in fact a Latin word that takes the -i plural, but “abacuses” is generally acceptable) do just help you keep track, but I believe you can use clever tricks to mechanically simplify complex operations.
Upvoted for ‘abacii’, it’s a very pleasing word and I’m going to be saying it all day now.
There are a lot of really fun maths videos on youtube about abacii and slide rules and all the cool things that can be done with them. (I was going to link you one or two but falling into the youtube distraction hole trying to find them is going to massively derail my day.)
I almost wrote “calculator/sliderule/abacus” for that reason
Maybe I’m not remembering how they work correctly, but I thought sliderules and abacus…es…abacuses? abacii?.. just helped you repeat operations and keep track of the work you’d done, rather than executing mathematical functions for you
Sliderules definitely do operations for you. The basic multiplication sliderule uses logarithmic scales to do multiplication by addition. Abaci (it is in fact a Latin word that takes the -i plural, but “abacuses” is generally acceptable) do just help you keep track, but I believe you can use clever tricks to mechanically simplify complex operations.
Upvoted for ‘abacii’, it’s a very pleasing word and I’m going to be saying it all day now.
There are a lot of really fun maths videos on youtube about abacii and slide rules and all the cool things that can be done with them. (I was going to link you one or two but falling into the youtube distraction hole trying to find them is going to massively derail my day.)