A type of this counting device is called suan pan in Chinese & soroban in Japanese
... Modern Times: 
The Suan-pan, the Soroban and the Schoty are from the period c. ... We offer 
training using the Japanese Soroban abacus, which is has one upper row of 
beads and four... [DOC] [TLE] The invention of the Abacus or Soroban | EDUCATION IN JAPAN ... [PAR] The Chinese abacus (called suanpan in Chinese) was first described in a 190 ... 
c500 BC Greeks and Romans are using counting devices based on the same... [DOC] [TLE] History of Computers and Computing, Calculating tools, The abacus [PAR] These methods of calculations introduced some elementary kind of .... in the 16th 
century the Chinese suanpan was adopted in Japan, under the name soroban.