3874 entries. Last updated May 21, 2013.

Perhaps the Earliest Extant Treatise on Finger Reckoning (688)

A chart of the positions used in finger notation. (View Larger)

A manuscript entitled Romana computatio, dated 688, appears to be the earliest extant document on ancient Roman techniques of finger reckoning. It was probably used as a source by the Venerable Bede for his De tempore ratione liber (725).

Sherman, Writing on Hands. Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (2000) 28.