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1898 illustration of abacuses of many capitals in various styles. In architecture, an abacus (from the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax), ' slab '; or French abaque, tailloir; pl.: abacuses or abaci) [1] is a flat slab forming the uppermost member or division of the capital of a column, above the bell.
The word abacus dates to at least 1387 AD when a Middle English work borrowed the word from Latin that described a sandboard abacus. The Latin word is derived from ancient Greek ἄβαξ (abax) which means something without a base, and colloquially, any piece of rectangular material.
For example, the volutes of ancient Greek and Roman Ionic capitals had lain in the same plane as the architrave above them. This had created an awkward transition at the corner – where, for example, the designer of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens had brought the outside volute of the end capitals forward at a 45-degree angle.
This format has been used for critical apparatuses of Shakespeare and many other authors. In variorum editions, the apparatus is often placed at the bottom of the page. Sometimes a three-part format is employed, with the main text at the top of the page, textual variants in the middle, and the editor's commentary at the bottom.
The book describes methods of doing calculations without aid of an abacus, and as Ore (1948) confirms, for centuries after its publication the algorismists (followers of the style of calculation demonstrated in Liber Abaci) remained in conflict with the abacists (traditionalists who continued to use the abacus in conjunction with Roman numerals).
Five groups of markings appear on the tablet. The three sets of Greek symbols arranged along the left, right and bottom edges of the tablet are numbers from the acrophonic system. In the center of the tablet – a set of five parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semicircle at the intersection of the bottom-most ...
Word or root Scientific meaning from Latin Example Latin word Latin meaning Scientific meaning from Greek Example Greek word Greek meaning Notes alg- alga: alga alga: seaweed: pain: analgesic: ἄλγος: pain crema- burn: cremation: cremāre: to burn hang, be suspended cremaster: κρεμάννυμι: I hang (tr.)
Of prime importance, he specifically notes the formats of the semuncia, sicilicus and sextula as used on the Roman bronze abacus, "auf dem chernan abacus". The semuncia is the symbol resembling a capital "S", but he also includes the symbol that resembles a numeral three with horizontal line at the top, the whole rotated 180 degrees.