Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal.

There are two beads on each rod in the upper deck and five beads each in the bottom for both decimal and hexadecimal computation.

The beads are usually rounded and made of a hardwood.

The beads are counted by moving them up or down towards the beam.

In the left part there were four beads, which in the first row have unitary values ( 1, 2, 3, and 4 ), and in the right side there are three beads with values of 5, 10, and 15 respectively.

The wires are usually bowed to bulge upward in the center, to keep the beads pinned to either of the two sides.

It is cleared when all the beads are moved to the right.

During manipulation, beads are moved to the left.

For easy viewing, the middle 2 beads on each wire ( the 5th and 6th bead ) usually are of a different colour from the other eight beads.

Most beadwork takes the form of jewelry or other personal adornment, but beads are also used in wall hangings and sculpture.

Right angle weave is done using both ends of the fishing line, in which beads are strung in repeated circular arrangements, and the fishing line is pulled tight after each bead circle is made.

In peyote stitch, beads are woven into the piece in a very similar fashion to knitting or cross stitching.

During the 20th century the Plateau tribes, such as the Nez Perce perfected contour-style beadwork, in which the lines of beads are stitch to emphasize the pictorial imagery.

Eastern tribes have a completely different beadwork aesthetic, and Innu, Mi ' kmaq, Penobscot, and Haudenosaunee tribes are known for symmetrical scroll motifs in white beads, called the " double curve.

" Iroquois are also known for " embossed " beading in which strings pulled taunt force beads to pop up from the surface, creating a bas-relief.

A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100, 000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery.

When weaving on a loom, the beads are locked in between the warp threads by the weft threads.

Then the beads are pressed in between the warp threads.

Off-loom beadweaving is a family of beadwork techniques in which seed beads are woven together into a flat fabric or a three-dimensional object such as a ball, clasp, box, or a piece of jewelry.

Artisan-made hooks are often made of hand-turned woods, sometimes decorated with semi-precious stones or beads.

Imported beads found there and at other Zhizo sites, are evidence of trade, probably of ivory and skins, with traders on the Indian Ocean coast.

Beads may be large or small ; the smallest type of beads used are known as seed beads, these are the beads used for the " woven " style of beaded jewellery.

The beads ( if they are colored ) and at least a portion of the tassel are traditionally red, symbolizing the blood of Christ and the blood of the martyrs.

In Hawaii these natural beads were traditionally collected from the beach drift in order to make puka shell jewelry.

These beads are traditionally worn by married women in Mali as multiple strands around the hips.

Here the stringing medium ( traditionally silk thread or another similar, synthetic medium ) has knots tied into it as a means of separating the individual beads from each other.

Budai is traditionally depicted as a fat bald man wearing a robe and wearing or otherwise carrying prayer beads.

Women artisans traditionally made wampum beads by rounding small pieces of the shells of whelks, then piercing them with a hole before stringing them.

A misbaha ( Arabic: مسبحة ), sibha ( Arabic: سبحة ), Tasbeeh ( Urdu ), or tespih ( Albanian, Turkish and Bosnian ) is a string of prayer beads which is traditionally used by Muslims to keep track of counting in tasbih.

Rudraksha ( also Rudraksh ; Sanskrit: (" Rudra's eyes ") is a large evergreen broad-leaved tree whose seed is traditionally used for prayer beads in Hinduism.

Diamond-shaped beads were traditionally worn on bracelets, sewn onto strips of leather and arranged in traditional sets composed of a specific ratio of blue to red to polychromatic specimens.

When granulated motifs are desired, small beads are made traditionally by using precious metal wire or fine sheet to start with, which is cut up in small pieces mixed with flux and placed in the small holes of a pitted block of charcoal ( or any other suitable refractory material ) and are then melted with a blowpipe ( or today with a blowtorch ), after which the bits of wire curl up and take a natural spherical like shape to end up in minuscule grains which slightly differ one from the other.

The full costume traditionally includes a patterned wrapped skirt ( saburet ), a red and yellow headscarf ( musue ), arm and leg beads ( wini ), a gold nose ring ( olasu ) and earrings in addition to the mola blouse ( dulemor ).

The most common type of modern glass bead is the seed bead, a small type of bead typically less than 6 mm, traditionally monochrome, and manufactured in very large quantities. They are a modern example of mechanically-drawn glass beads.

The Greeks used it for making jewelry and beads.

Agate is also still used today for decorative displays, cabochons, beads, carvings and Intarsia art as well as face-polished and tumble-polished specimens of varying size and origin.

Archaeological records show that people made and used beads as long as 5, 000 years ago.

Beadwork in Europe has a history dating back millennia, to when shells and animal bones were used as beads in necklaces.

Seed beads began to be used for embroidery, crochet, and numerous off-loom techniques.

Their beadwork commonly features white bead outlines, an echo of the shell beads or pearls Southeastern tribes used before contact.

In Africa many forms of value store have been used including beads, ingots, ivory, various forms of weapons, livestock, the manilla currency, ochre and other earth oxides, and so on.

* An abacus was created sometime between 1000 BC and 500 BC, it later become a form of calculation frequency, nowadays it can be used as a very advanced, yet basic digital calculator that uses beads on rows to represent numbers.

Autoerotic sexual activity can involve use of dildos, vibrators, anal beads, and other sex toys, though these devices can also be used with a partner.

Jewellery may be made from a wide range of materials, but gemstones, precious metals, beads and shells have been widely used.

Alternatively, jewellery has been used as a currency or trade good ; an example being the use of slave beads.

High-density alloys of tungsten with nickel, copper or iron are used in high-quality darts ( to allow for a smaller diameter and thus tighter groupings ) or for fishing lures ( tungsten beads allow the fly to sink rapidly ).

Many seeds have been used as beads in necklaces and rosaries including Job's tears, Chinaberry, rosary pea, and castor bean.

A full-featured computerized process simulator can be used to depict such models, as can simpler educational demonstrations using spreadsheet software, pennies being transferred between cups based on the roll of a die, or dipping into a tub of colored beads with a scoop.

People living along the Central Asian trade routes used various forms of chalcedony, including carnelian, to carve intaglios, ring bezels ( the upper faceted portion of a gem projecting from the ring setting ), and beads that show strong Greco-Roman influence.

The term " Rosary " is used to describe both a sequence of prayers and a string of prayer beads used to count the prayers.

Mechanically similar strings of beads are used in other cultures ; for example, the Greek kombolói, sometimes called worry beads, appear similar and are sometimes manipulated in a mechanically similar way, as if counting, but have no religious or cultural significance.