GREECE

The first known calculation tool came from the island of Salamis (just off the coast of Greece) in circa 300 BCE. But earlier counting boards and tables date back to the dawn of civilization. Before then people would have drawn grooves in the dirt at their feet and used pebbles as markers to aid their calculations.

Merchants are believed to have developed the counting boards to facilitate calculations in their stalls. Historians speculate that the earliest of these were shallow boxes filled with sand. They drew grooves in the sand much as they would draw them on the ground.

The Salamis counting board represents the next generation of technology. It is a marble tablet with its grooves already inscribed. With as few as four grooves, it was possible to add and subtract to 10,000. Next

Top Right: Greek accountant working at traditional counting table. Counting tables were used throughout the middle East and Europe until the middle of the 19th century. Called "counters" even after nobody counted on them, counting tables became the counters in department stores and our kitchens.

Right: Greek accounting tablet from the island of Samalis. The lines scribed into the stone could be used in conjunction with pebbles or beads to accomplish addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division.