NUMBER STORIES
While Caius was learning to add and subtract with the Roman numerals and with calculi, a Chinese boy, whom we may know as Wu (wōō), was learning to add and subtract with the numerals which Chang had studied many years before. He too found it necessary to use something like the calculi which Caius had worked with, but instead of pebbles or small disks he used rods made of bamboo.
ANCIENT CHINESE STICK NUMERALS
The number 1267 expressed by means of rods or sticks by the old Chinese method
Wu thought he was doing something remarkable if he added two large numbers in
two minutes. You would probably add them in a few seconds, but think how much longer
it would take if you had only a little pile of sticks with which to work. It took Wu some
time to lay the sticks out to represent a number and still longer to represent two
numbers and then to find their sum.
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