Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/75

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.

Number Stories, p52-illustration.png 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. 52