Literary notes about abacus (AI summary)
The word "abacus" appears in literature with a rich double life, serving both as an architectural detail and a tool of calculation. In architectural texts, the abacus is depicted as the flat, often square tablet that crowns a column's capital—a design element meticulously measured to harmonize with the column below and the entablature above ([1], [2], [3]). Meanwhile, in narratives and treatises on arithmetic, it stands in as a reliable counting board, symbolizing methodical order and precision in numerical operations ([4], [5]). This versatile term, therefore, bridges the worlds of structural form and logical computation, reflecting its longstanding cultural and functional significance ([6], [7]).
- The abacus has a width equivalent to the thickness of the bottom of a column.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio - Abacus , a square tablet which crowns the capital of the column.
— from Architecture: Classic and Early Christian by John Slater - The capital is surmounted by a feature known as the abacus, which is rectangular on plan, but varies in detail in the different orders.
— from Design and Tradition A short account of the principles and historic development of architecture and the applied arts by Amor Fenn - The shopkeeper, who speaks half-a-dozen languages well, cannot tell what change to give you without the help of his abacus.
— from Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus by Clive Phillipps-Wolley - 4 The abacus consists of a frame with a number of parallel wires on which counting-beads are strung.
— from The Philippine Islands A Political, Geographical, Ethnographical, Social and Commercial History of the Philippine Archipelago, Embracing the Whole Period of Spanish Rule by Foreman, John, F.R.G.S. - 4. The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may be the abacus.
— from The Stones of Venice, Volume 1 (of 3) by John Ruskin - Then, of the nine and a half parts let one and a half be reserved for the height of the abacus, and let the other eight be used for the volutes.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio
