Manchester China town and the abacus
The abacus is rectangular with a wooden frame on the four sides and small rod fixed inside strung with wooden beads;
a girder across the middle separates the abacus into two parts.
Each rod has two beads on its upper part, each representing five, and five beads on the lower part, each representing one.
With the application of the abacus, people summarized many abacus rhymes, increasing the calculating speed.
By the time of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644AD), people could use the abacus in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, which were widely used in calculating weight, among, space and volume.
Since it is simple to make an abacus and cheap to buy one, and it is easy to remember abacus rhymes, simple and convenient to calculate with abacus, it is widely used in China. The Chinese immigrants brought the very useful tool abacus to UK with them. When Chinese immigrants came to Manchester and opened businesses, they started to use the abacus as their calculator.
