Arithmeum: Arithmetic Museum

Jan suggested that we might like the Arithmeum, a museum we never would have found on our own. A collection of devices to add, subtract, multiply, and divide from abacuses and Incan quipu to adding machines and slide rules + art + chairs. Right up our alley. We took more pictures here than in the Roman Museum in Köln.

Sign for Arithmetic Museum

Visitors were invited to sit on the chairs and to try out all the calculating machines with the blue symbol shown below, which made it a lot more interesting than if we just could look at them.

Roman Abacus

Wilhelm Schickard built a calculating machine for Kepler in 1624. There was a copy to fiddle with.

Rich & Ross figuring out how Schickard's calculating machine works

Baroque Calculating Machine 

String Chair - One of the most comfortable of the chairs in the museum

Rich liked this Japanese abacus combined with a pocket calculator. 

Combined Calculator + Abacus

Anyone else old enough to remember these adding machines we had as kids before our first slide rules? With the metal stylus to push the numbers up and down? No batteries needed. 

Metal Stylus Hand Adding Machines

Anyway, we highly recommend this museum to anyone who likes math and art and happens to be in Bonn. Reminded me of the Museum of Figuring in Los Angeles.

Here's a good chair for someone who is working on knot theory.

Chair with knot