Talk:Logical abacus

It's hard to tell from this article what it's about. I suspect it refers to the logical abacus built by W. Stanley Jevons, also called a logical piano. But the article has links to pictures of ordinary abacuses, which are quite a different thing. There is also a hypothetical machine called an abacus machine which was introduced by Lambek for discussions of computer science. The linked pictures of abacuses are also irrelevant to Lambek's abacus machines.

This article needs to be made more lucid. I'm not qualified to do this myself, so I hope some expert will come by to clean it up.

OinkOink 23:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is copied word for word from the 'Abacus' entry in the 11th Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. The examples mentioned in the Britannica article are machines discussed by W. S. Jevons (Element. Lessons in Logic, c. xxiii), John Venn (Symbolic Logic 2ed, 1894, p. 135) and Allan Marquand (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1885, pp307) : ) The linked pictures of ordinary abacuses don't have much to do with the article as you said, so I'll remove the links. Should it also be mentioned that this article is based on the Britannica article?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.70.149.130 (talk) 00:14, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Turing machine?

This article needs to mention something about whether an Abacus can simulate a Turing machine. MrVoluntarist 15:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

don't be silly... or do you always ask that about anything remotely like a computer?? A Turing Machine can be simulated with a piece of paper and a pencil. An Abacus is just a fancy piece of paper. But to even suggest that a piece of paper or an Abacus is a Turing Machine has got to be a joke. Old Codger — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.35.119.155 (talk) 04:31, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

AfD

I will nominate this article for deletion unless it is improved and shown to be significantly different from abacus--Cronholm144 00:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sodden Grammar with Incomprehensibly Disjoint Phrases

as of 2012-01-26, the photo and topic are interesting, so I would object to deletion of this article. The article appears to be describing an advanced mechanical calculator of some sort, possibly implementing Boolean algebra?? But the article as written is riddled with grammatical errors which makes it difficult to understand the authors intent; Example: "The most recent form know of the logical abacus is a frame made often out of wood" -- I'd be very surprised if this were indeed copied word for word from another encyclopaedia. As if that were not bad enough, the article also comes across as the random stringing of disjointed excerpts together, the result being about as clear as a pint of Barley Stout. But the topic itself does come off as being potentially quite interesting. I'd love to hear more about this special type of Abacus, if someone could manage to write about it in a comprehensible fashion using proper English. I know a lot about computer technology/history, but I've never encountered this device before. Old Codger

Merge into Logical machine

This will solve both the problems with the quality of the article and the fact that someone apparently confused Jevon's logical abacus (which involved moving around pieces of wood by hand) with the machine he had built based on the same principles (the "logic piano"). Daggerstab (talk) 19:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)