Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/78

OF LONG AGO About three hundred years ago there went to school in Japan a boy named Seki (sā kē), whose teacher had recently learned about an improvement which the Japanese had made on the Chinese abacus.

So Seki learned how to compute on the soroban (sō'rṓ bän'), which is the Japanese form of the suan pan of China, and this instrument is used everywhere in Japan to-day.

Number Stories, p55-illustration.png JAPANESE ABACUS Japanese abacus, or soroban. This instrument is used everywhere in Japan to-day

Seki grew up and became the greatest mathematician of Japan, and his name is known everywhere in that country and is also familiar to many mathematical scholars in other parts of the world.

Many Japanese can add and subtract more rapidly with the soroban than we can with pencil and paper. 55