Excerpt:
The word abacus comes from the Greek word "ABAX" meaning a calculating board or calculating table. It was invented by the Chinese, the first known record of the abacus was from an ancient sketch in a book from the Yuan Dynasty which was in the fourteenth century. It has a Mandarin name which is"Suan Pan" which means calculating plate. It's inventor is unknown. The Abacus is mostly referred to as the first computer