Quote Originally Posted by jarekp View Post
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Have you imagined that Copernicus was able to do quite complicated calculations?
Try to do above using roman numbers (he did not know other)....
The awkwardness of computation using Roman numerals probably accounts for the Romans' use of the abacus.

The Roman abacus was similar to modern ones but had some additional columns at the right...

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The Wikipedia article provides a full description of the device and its use...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus