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The abacus was invented in Babylon and Egypt around 3,000 BC. And has been used for centuries all over the world. Abacus was introduced to Japan in the 17th century by the Chinese and it was adopted very quickly, named as Soroban and further refined by the Japanese custom. After the latest refinement in the 1930’s the Japanese Soroban reached its current form and it is still widely used in Japan. Specially trained Soroban Masters can perform complex arithmetic operations much faster than their counterparts using electronic calculators.
