The invention of telegraphy transformed the way that information was transmitted across space. This particular object represents an early example, donated to National Museums Scotland in 1855, at a time when the first transatlantic telegraph cable was being laid. This particular object represents not just the material heritage of this critical communications technology—it also demonstrates the instability of that heritage. The object, despite being only the 3rd object collected by the museum, has for the last fifteen years been classified as ‘unlocated’ in its collections stores.
This object speaks to the history of the sources through which we tell the story of circulating knowledge. It also speaks to the fragility of this history—and how stories about loss of information are as critical to narratives of knowledge in transit as the stories that we find in the archives.
This well-used abacus comes from Mexico. It is not known who made it or when, although it is tentatively dated to around 1900.
The abacus, as an aid to doing arithmetic, has a long history that can be linked to Roman times. China, Japan, Korea, and Russia have distinctive forms of the instrument. A French mathematician and soldier learned about it in Russia during imprisonment at the time of the Napoleonic wars and brought one back to France for teaching purposes. From there it spread to England and then the United States, where it came to be widely used in teaching at newly established public or common schools. As this example attests, the device also spread to Mexico.
Abacuses made for doing commercial arithmetic, such as were common in Asia and Russia, tended to have uniform beads shaped for easy manipulation. Columns might be split, with one or two beads representing the digit 5 and the remaining the digit 1. When the abacus was adopted as a teaching device for young children, the beads became larger and were often colored.
