07. Babylona/Maya/China/Binacci – Philippe Leblanc

2. Chinacci 20 Mini S

The perforations in Chinacci 20 Mini S correspond to the first 20 terms in the Fibonacci sequence. They are depicted in an ancient Chinese numeral system that dates back to the 3rd century BC, and which precedes the abacus by several centuries.

Also called the rod numeral system, calculations were done by counting and moving small bamboo rods on a flat surface.

The additive base-10 system consisted of two sets of eighteen symbols: one set for units, hundreds, etc., and another set for tens, thousands, hundreds of thousands, etc.

An empty spot (no rod) is the equivalent of zero.

By simply tilting the number rods 90°, you can go from units to tens and above.

As is the case in our numeral system, the length of a number is proportionate to its size. This is not necessarily the case in Maya, Babylonian or binary numeral systems. This ancient Chinese system is closest to our decimal system.

In this example, read the Fibonacci sequence from top to bottom and from left to right.

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