The programs for children on the topic “Calculating in olden times” vary a great deal and have been conceived for many different age groups. Thus, pre-school children can meet larger numbers for the first time in the program “Fingers, Stones, Knots”, where they learn in a playful way how people in past cultures dealt with numbers too large for them to count.

Other programs designed for different ages and abilities include learning how to use Napier’s rods (a simple method for multiplying invented by John Napier in the 17th century), learning how simple adding machines work, then the mechanical calculating machines that can do all four operations of arithmetic, the early machines with keys for entering numbers, and finally more sophisticated machines that can even compute square roots.

• Fingers, Stones, Knots (from 5 years)
• 1+1=2 Adding with Machines (from 7 years)
• Abacus and Reckoning Table (from 8 years)
• Current on, Current off – Holes for Storing Data (from 8 years)
• Sectors (from 8 years)
• Musical punch cards (from 8 years)
• Using Napier’s Rods (from 9 years)
• Computing with Machines (from 9 years)
• Arithmetic in foreign cultures (from 10 years)
• Pi ϖ (from 10 years)