This illustrated paperback book gives detailed instructions for using a Chinese abacus to add, subtract, multiply, divide, extract square roots, and find cube roots. Australian-born metallurgist, Stanford University graduate, and later Stanford professor of metallurgy Welton J. Crook (1886-1976). Crook wrote it. He became fascinated with the abacus on a visit to Hong Kong, and resolved to publish a clear exposition on the instrument in English. His short book was published in 1958 by Pacific Books in Palo Alto, California, and sold tens of thousands of copies. For an abacus collected with this book, see 1989.0709.01. The abacus and the book were given to the Smithsonian by Washington, D. C., clockmaker Elton L. Howe in 1989.
On Crook, see: Stanford University Faculty Memorials, “Memorial Resolution Welton J. Crook (1886-1976)," digitized by the Stanford Historical Society.