Set of bamboo slips is oldest calculation tool

BEIJING: A set of bamboo slips dating back more than 2,300 years has been officially recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s earliest decimal calculation tool.

“The significance is that it’s decimal, not duo-decimal as seen in other countries. Decimal did not appear in Europe until the 15th century,” said Professor Li Xueqin, head of the Research and Conservation Centre for Excavated Texts of Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The 21 slips, crafted around 305BC during the Warring States period, are each 43.5cm long and 1.2cm wide. Arranged together as a multiplication table, the slips can perform multiplication and division of any two whole numbers under 100 and numbers containing the fraction 0.5.

The slips have inscribed numbers and holes, where threads used to go through. A user would pull the threads corresponding to numbers needed to be calculated.