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On this page:  Keeping tally – Counting on it

Keeping tally

First and foremost computers were routinely applied to computations; it is all there in the name.  Let’s take a look at some of the history of this task. The word ‘computer’ was first used in the early 17^th century but it was applied to a function not a piece of equipment, it meant ‘a person who performs calculations’.

In fact right up to the middle of the 20^th century the word computer, just like dishwasher, was used to describe a person’s role and not a device. This act of computing or calculating as a mental exercise rather than the application of calculating equipment has of course been around for a very long time.

The earliest find so far in the genre of counting devices is the ‘Ishango’ bone which has been dated to 20,000 BCE.  It consists of a series of etchings made upon a baboon’s fibula.

It was discovered in 1960 in the Congo, quite close to what has been established as a ground zero for modern man, the place from where Homo sapiens migrated to populate the world some 70,000 years ago. The bone’s etched markings were quite sophisticated and are assumed to have been made with quartz.  Some suggest that the bone was used to mark the passing of time, perhaps a six-month lunar calendar.

Others suggest that the markings show a rather good appreciation of mathematics.  The very sophistication suggests therefore that this type of device had been in use for some time prior to the Ishango bone dating.

But whatever its date and purpose most propose that it is some sort of counting device, a very early tally stick. Tally sticks were used down the years in many countries.

By medieval times debts were being recorded by a ‘split tally’.  This was an early form of double-entry accounting.  Marks were made around a stick and then it was split down its length so that both lender and debtor could retain a clear record of the transaction. They were also much in use as a proof of the payment of taxes.

The UK’s Exchequer for example used split tally sticks for its tax collections right up until 1826 when they were finally legally abolished. In 1834 the then British prime minister, Charles Grey, was much better known for his aromatic blend of bergamot-flavoured tea, his other title being Earl Grey.   Grey’s government decided to ceremonially burn the amassed old tally sticks.  They unwisely decided to use a stove within the House of Lords for the purpose.

Charles Dickens, no less, criticised the decision and talked of ‘counting devices destroying the halls of government’.  He went on to describe the event and its cost in some detail.

‘In 1834 … there was a considerable accumulation of them [tally sticks].  … What was to be done with such worn-out worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood?  The sticks were housed in Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for firewood by the miserable people who lived in that neighbourhood. However [the sticks were no longer] useful and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went out that they should be privately and confidentially burned.  It came to pass that they were burned in a stove in the House of Lords.  The stove, over-gorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses [of parliament] were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; and we are now in the second million of the cost thereof.’

In 1835 JMW Turner, the landscape artist produced a famous painting of the houses well alight.  Entitled The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, it is today on show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This tally stick fire burned down much of the Houses of Parliament, all apart from the Westminster Hall.  It did significantly more damage than Guy Fawkes might ever have achieved and much more than the later WWII incendiary bomb attacks on the Houses.

Counting on it

Numbers are said to be one of the key features that distinguish mankind from other animals although natural scientists do suggest that birds can actually discern numbers.  Apparently they may be able to recognise one, two or three things but any larger group the bird-brain handles with the concept of ‘many’.

We humans too were perfectly content with that simplistic numeric approach until civilisation found us living cheek-by-jowl.  As we began to trade our labour and skills within an ever-expanding social community we needed a broader concept.

One of the earliest civilisations, the Mesopotamians, met these problems first and developed a proper system of numbers.  Mesopotamia as a term literally means ‘between the rivers’, the two rivers in question being the Euphrates and the Tigris.  It was where modern Iraq is today.

The richness of these two rivers’ deposits fostered the development of agricultural techniques.  The wealth of the crops became the basis of the local people’s ability to combine and prosper as communities and to expand into cities; and cities certainly needed numbers.

By 4000 BCE the Mesopotamians had evolved a whole series of counting systems, used to count slaves or to tally containers.  The agricultural produce needed the development of a system for quantities, weights, volumes and so on.

Bizarrely at this stage there was a notation for one sheep or one day but there was no general symbol for the concept of ‘one’, each was distinct. By around 3000 BCE this had evolved into a unification of the twelve or more separate systems that they had been using.  This system was subsequently passed down to the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Persians.

The system was based on the root of 60, or sexagesimal (meaning sixtieth), which proved to be a very useful base number as it is divisible by no fewer than twelve integers – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and 60 itself.  Quite why they and other civilisations used 60 is unclear, except maybe for the wealth of its divisors.

The basic unit of distance was a cable, with a league being the value of thirty cables and a rod defined as one sixtieth of a cable.  The unit of area was a garden with 1,800 gardens being termed an estate.  The unit of volume was a bowl, and sixty of these formed a bushel.

For the measurement of time they set the basic unit as a day.  These were combined so that thirty days summed to a month, and 360 days to a year.  It is of course from this era that we still express time and angles based upon the same root of 60.

The Babylonians were the first to introduce the notion of positional significance in arranging its cuneiform numerals.

By 2700 BCE they had developed the abacus.

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