how do bouncers count how many people are inside?
on 16 october 1834, two labourers were burning old sticks in the furnaces under the house of lords. that evening, most of the palace of westminster burned down (wikipedia).
the sticks were counters. so is the clicker in a bouncer's hand tonight. and they exist for the same reason: somebody needs a count that somebody else can't argue with.
how do bouncers count how many people are inside?
with a hand tally counter. one click for every person who comes in, a separate count for everyone who leaves, and the difference has to stay under the number the venue is allowed to hold. handheld counters are used to this day to count people entering and leaving buildings, events and public transit (smithsonian).
the count isn't for the bouncer. it's for whoever asks later how many people were in that room. which is the question every counter in history has been built to answer: who is this count for, and why don't they trust you?
what were the tally sticks that burned down parliament?
receipts. for centuries, england's treasury kept its accounts on sticks of willow, notched for the amount and then split down the middle. each side of the deal kept one half (wikipedia). the split was the clever part. the grain tore unevenly, so only the two original halves fit back together, and if anyone added a notch to his half, the other half would show it was missing (wikipedia).
a count neither side could change alone. it worked so well that the exchequer kept using sticks until 1826, more than forty years after a law said records should be on paper. that left a building full of retired receipts. in october 1834 the clerk of works, richard weobley, was told to get rid of them. he could have given them away as firewood. he burned them instead, in two furnaces built for coal, not wood (wikipedia). j. m. w. turner watched the palace burn and painted it. that's his painting at the top of this page (philadelphia museum of art).
why did virginia put a counter in every bar?
because the state wanted its own count of your drinks. in the spring of 1877, to pay the interest on its debt, virginia made every saloon and liquor dealer install a moffett register, named after the state senator who suggested it. one turn of the crank per drink: a bell rang and the dials moved up by one, and the tax collector read the total (smithsonian).
the bell was the witness. the whole bar heard every count. the box came locked, and the one in the smithsonian still is. by 1878 it was reportedly falling out of use (smithsonian). nobody wants a bell that announces their fourth drink.
why are chinese votes counted in 正?
when i was a kid, we voted for our class committee. the ballots were read out one by one, and every vote went up on the blackboard as one stroke under a name. five strokes make a 正.
no box, no lock. the count happens out loud, in front of everyone, so there's nothing to argue about afterwards. most chinese polls are still counted this way (digmandarin). english speakers do the same with four lines and a slash.
how did the inca count without writing?
with knots. a khipu is one main cord with hundreds of strings hanging off it, and numbers were tied in base ten: where a knot sat on a string told you whether it meant ones, tens or hundreds (dumbarton oaks).
a count is only as good as the people who believe it, and after the conquest, the spanish couldn't decide. in 1583 the church ordered "idolatrous" khipus destroyed. all through the 1600s, the spanish crown was accepting khipus as evidence in court (dumbarton oaks). fewer than 1,000 survive.
some may hold more than numbers. in 2017, the elders of a mountain village called san juan de collata opened a wooden box they'd kept hidden from outsiders and showed an anthropologist two khipus. they said the khipus were letters about a war between local chiefs (national geographic). nobody can read them yet.
what is the oldest counting device?
possibly a baboon's leg bone, about 43,000 years old, found in border cave on the border of south africa and eswatini. it's about 8 cm long and covered in notches. it might be a tally. its discoverer thought it was more likely ritual (wikipedia). the better-known ishango bone from the congo is over 20,000 years old, and people have read prime numbers and a moon calendar into its notches (wikipedia).
these are the only counts in this story with no witness left. we know someone counted. we don't know what, or who it was for.
who is a mala counting for?
nobody but you. a tibetan buddhist mala has 108 beads, and one passes through your fingers for every mantra. finish a round, and you slide one small bead down a short string hanging off the mala. ten rounds, and a bead moves on the second string: a thousand. with both strings full, ten thousand mantras (yowangdu). some malas carry little clips to hold your place.
no tax collector, no other half of the stick, no class watching. and it still needs a witness. i used to chant, and i tried an electronic counter first. it made no sound, and half the time i didn't know if it had counted. a bead you can feel, or a click you can hear, is the witness when the only one checking is you.
is a tally counter the same as a guest counter?
yes. tally counter, clicker counter, hand counter, guest counter: same object. press with your thumb, the number goes up by one and stays there until you turn the reset knob. the click is the bell, the split stick and the blackboard, in one hand.
somebody's is at a door tonight. mine counts breaths. the tally counter comes in eight colors of plastic, or metal if you want it heavier in your hand.
go play.