IIT-IIM alumni 'invents' first Indian abacus system

Bangalore, Feb 26 (UNI) Mr M S Nethrapal, an IIT-IIM alumni, today claimed to have invented the first Indian abacus system and the first in the world to use negative numbers.

Displaying his invention to newspersons here, he said that through his invention, called IOTA, calculation would be easier and faster for children in the three to 12 age group. IOTA in mathematics means square root of -1. The implementation of negative numbers brought speed and accuracy to the system, he added.

Citing instances, Mr Nethrapal said the entire operations of nine could be converted to -1 since nine could be expressed as 10-1.

Similarly, 97's operations could be converted to -3 as 97 was nothing but 100-3. IOTA could implement such complex number representations, which no other abacus in the world could represent.

He claimed that Indian abacus was the first fast learning abacus system in the world, with the learning time halved from 36 months.

Because of this 18 months savings, parents could save Rs 18,000 in cost and time.

Mr Nethrapal, a product of IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore, had resigned his job as an IPS officer in Jammu and Kashmir, and it took five years for him to invent this new system.

To a question, he said he had applied for patent and had prepared 33 books for his invention. He offered free training on basic addition and subtraction to popularise the system.

UNI