The Numbering Systems Museum
From tally marks to Unicode — how humanity invented counting, zero, and the number systems that built civilization. See any number rendered in 8 systems at once, play an interactive abacus, and trace 37,000 years of mathematical innovation.
Universal Number Display
The same value, written eight ways at once. Each system answers different questions: Roman numerals don't have a zero; Mayan does; binary has no decimal point but base-60 has minutes-and-seconds; Babylonian wrote numbers wedge-by-wedge on clay.
The Collection
38 artifacts spanning 37,000 years — from the Lebombo bone to emoji. Click any card to copy its description.
No artifacts in this category.
37 Millennia of Counting
Key milestones from 35,000 BC (the Lebombo notched baboon fibula) to 2010 — the longest unbroken thread in this museum.
Interactive Abacus
Click beads to move them toward or away from the beam. Upper beads are worth 5; lower beads are worth 1 each. The value updates in real time.
Hands-on Instruments
Convert between bases, decompose numbers into place-value terms, browse the Unicode + UTF-8 layout, and do arithmetic by hand in binary, octal, and hex.