Slate with Numeral Frame
date: label: date made
content: ca 1890
notes: label: Description
content: This object combines two common tools of 19th-century American teaching: the slate and the teaching abacus or numeral frame. Both the piece of black slate and the wires of the numeral frame fit in a wooden framework. There are two rows of wooden beads, with ten beads in each row. The beads are painted in the colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue). The unsigned and undated instrument was given to the Museum in 1975.
label: Description
content: In the 1870s and 1880s, at least three Americans took out patents for combination slates and abaci. Freeman D’Ossone of Philadelphia proposed a slate with a row of nine numbered beads that moved up and down on a wire in a frame with the slate (US Patent 119,332, dated September 26, 1871). The beads shown in the patent description are spherical.
label: Description
content: Henry Stewart of Erie, Pa., proposed an abacus attachment for school slates that fit atop the slate and had two rows of beads with ten beads in each row. The beads are slightly flattened (US Patent 217,749, dated February 6, 1883).
label: Description
content: Charlotte Francis Roddey of New York City proposed an “abacus for slates” in which a single row of 25 spherical beads fit into the frame of an abacus (US Patent 339933, dated April 13, 1886). None of these inventions precisely matches this object. It seems likely, however, that this slate with numeral frame dates from about the same period.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Education
label: Subject
content: Mathematics
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
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content: Abacus
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content: Learning Arithmetic
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content: Science & Mathematics
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content: Arithmetic Teaching
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Edith R. Meggers
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MA.335281
label: catalog number
content: 335281
label: accession number
content: 314637
objectType: label: Object Name
content: slate with numeral frame
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: wood (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: slate (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .1 cm x 22.3 cm x 22.3 cm; 1/32 in x 8 25/32 in x 8 25/32 in