- Jeton
thumb|300px|right|Counting table (woodcut probably from Strasbourg). The spaces between the lines function as the wires on an abacus. The place value is marked at the end.Jetons weretoken orcoin -like medals produced across Europe from the 13th through the 17th centuries. They were produced as counters for use in calculation on a lined board similar to anabacus . They also found use as a money substitute in games, similar to modern casino chips orpoker chip s. Thousands of different jetons exist, mostly of religious and educational designs, as well as portraits, these most resembling coinage.The Romans had similarly used pebbles, in Latin "calculi" - little stones. Addition is straight forward, and relatively efficient algorithms for multiplication and division were known.
As Arabic numerals and the zero came into use, "pen reckoning" gradually displaced "counter casting" as the common accounting method. Jetons for calculation were commonly used in Europe from about 1200 to 1400, and remained in occasional into the early nineteenth century. In Italy pen reckoning became common earlier, and was mandatory for bookkeeping use by 1300.
Neurenberg, Germany, was in the late Middle Ages an important center of production of jetons for commercial use. Later - "counter casting" being obsolete - the production shifted to jetons for use in games and toys, sometimes copying more or less famous jetons with a political background as the following.In "the Nederlanden", the Low Countries, the respective mints in the late Middle Ages in general produced the counters for the official bookkeeping. These mostly show the effigie of the ruler within a flattering text and on the reverse the rulers escutcheon and the name or city of the accounting office. During the Specifically in the last quarter of the 16th century, where "Geuzen" or "beggars" made important military contributions to the Dutch side and bookkeeping was already done without counters the production in the North was just for propaganda.
In the 21st century, Jetons continue to be used in some countries to denominate the substitutes for coins in coin-operated
public telephone s orvending machine s, because automatic valuation of coins by machines is unreliable or impossible due to several factors. They are usually made of metal or hard plastic.In France and other countries, "jeton" is also a small (as a token, so to speak) amount of
money paid to members of asociety or a legislative chamber each time they are present in ameeting ."Jeton" is also an Albanian name given to males. In the Albanian language it means "to live".
References
*cite book
last = Pullan
first = J. M.
year = 1968
title = The History of the Abacus
publisher = Books That Matter
location = London
id = ISBN 0-09-089410-3
*cite book
last = Menninger
first = Karl W.
year = 1969
title = Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers
publisher = MIT Press
id = ISBN 0-262-13040-8
*cite web
last = Bert
first = van Beek
year = 1986
url = http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/juh.html
title = Jetons: Their Use and History
work = Perspectives in Numismatics.
publisher = Chicago Coin Club
accessdate = 2006-06-29ee also
*
Casino token
*Location arithmetic External links
* [http://www.mernick.co.uk/jetton/index.htm Reckoning Counters]
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