Fabula Design Element: an Ancient Roman Abacus

This is a design element from Fabula, part of eLingua Latina, the experimental design project for teaching Latin, from Adrian Mallon Multimedia. It's an example of an ancient roman abacus I made using Unity3D. An abacus is a calculating machine in the shape of a table. The original of this model is made of brass and it's to be found in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. It has eight columns divided in two, where the upper parts have one counter and the first seven of the lower parts have got four counters, but the eighth has got five. On the right are three short columns, one above the other. Here all the counters are at zero...There you have it. I showed you an ancient roman abacus. See www.adrianmallonmultimedia.com/elingualatina/.

En exemplum abaci Romani antiqui à me Adriano Mallon per programma Unity3D nomine ordinatraliter creatum (ut elementum in collectione programmatum eLingua Latina enim). Abacus est instrumentum formae tabulae ad calculandum. Primogenium huius exemplaris aere factum in Bibliotheca Nationali Parisiensi conditum est. Octo primae columnarum divisae sunt in partes duas, quarum superiores partes singulae unum calculum habent, inferiores quattuor, separatim octava, quae calculos habet quinque. In dextro sunt tres brevium, quarum proxima super invicem ponitur...Finitum est. Abacum Romanum antiquum tibi ostendi.

[Ah! Listening back, I hear I mispronounced "finitum". I should have stressed the second syllable. Other mistakes?]
Avitus pointed out that my "-io" word endings are properly two syllables. I deliberately was pronouncing "-io" as "-yo" because I thought it was legitimate in common speech and in the Aeneid but I must be wrong. And he told me my centum mīlia should be centēna mīlia, not quīngenta mīlia but quīnquiēs centēna mīlia, and not mīliō but deciēs centēna mīlia. This work (pp.10, 247) suggests otherwise for the 100000s, though: N. Bubnov (ed.), Gerberti postea Silvestri II papae Opera Mathematica (972-1003), Berolini 1899 (http://www.archive.org/details/gerbertiposteas00sylvgoog)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• computer-assisted
• latin
• language
• learning
• games
• 3d
• model
• interactive
• immersive
• history
• mathematics
• mathematical
• instrument
• lingua
• latina
• latine
• latinitas
• roman
• abacus

[adrianmallon]

Thx, strike742.



[AvrieRox17]

helped me sooo much wih my project!!!!! thx!

[strike742]

great video

nice job man !

love roman empire