abacus

Cassiopeia proved it by using her fingers to do sums on her abacus, and flicked the beads up and down with nary a wince.

The sails had gone slack, and the disappointed girl slumped in one of the cozy nursery chairs and clicked idly at the beads of her abacus: back and forth, back and forth.

“No, we do not need a sextant—nor an abacus, Cassiopeia, please put that back.”

Much of the buzz around the subject in recent years has been about the development of powerful quantum computers which, the narrative goes, will make our fastest supercomputers seem like abacuses by comparison.

Recently, a lovely and well-meaning friend texted me one of those trending articles that make you want to trade your smartphone for an abacus and never speak of the internet again.