American billionaire businessman Elon Musk is all about exploring new technology and taking humans to Mars. The entrepreneur has also been interested in memes, cryptocurrency, and now it seems an ancient abacus ring from China’s Qing dynasty has Musk's attention. On Tuesday, businessman Vala Afshar shared a picture of a 300-year-old Chinese Qing Dynasty abacus ring and dubbed it as the oldest wearable tech.
The image showed a ring with a mini rectangular abacus in the center. Abacus was one of the earliest calculating devices in human civilization. The picture posted by Afshar caught the attention of the SpaceX founder who commented on the tweet and dubbed the ring as the original smartwatch. Musk’s comment garnered over 53.4k likes since it was posted on the microblogging site. Commenting on Musk’s reaction, netizens mentioned if it should rather be called a smart ring.
OG Smartwatch— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2021
Nope, smart ring or math ring? — Nirmal Guru (@Nirmal4G) June 2, 2021
According to ChinaCulture.org, the ring is made of pure silver,while the size of the miniature abacus is 1 cm×0.5 cm. The calculating device embedded in the ring comes with seven rods and on each rod, there are seven beads. The little beads in the rod have a diameter of 1mm and are not made of filamentary silver. According to the website, after the beads were examined under a microscope, it was found that they had no seams.
What makes it more interesting is the fact that the beads can be moved easily and smoothly along the silver rods without any hindrance to the calculation. However, considering the size of the abacus, it is quite understood that fingertips were not the ideal tool to run the calculations. The beads could only be moved with the help of small tools such as pins. Used by an ancient Chinese lady, access to hairpins was never a problem and calculations were always easy.
It has not been established if the ancient ring was the first wearable technology of humankind.