It was an invention Archimedes made to count the number of grains in a bottle.

The Sand Reckoner was a mathematical treatise by Archimedes in which he tried to calculate the number of grains of sand that would fill the universe. His estimate used the heliocentric model of Aristarchus, but could not measure stellar parallax. It had many underestimations that yielded a universal diameter of only about 2 light-years, but coincidentally matched one value for the known observable universe (10^63 grains having 10^80 nucleons).

Rene Descartes in 1637. Archimedes created a similar system.

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Archimedes. his exponential counting system created to help him calculate the amount of sand needed to fill the universe [in the Sand Reckoner]

a rekoner is a machine

hk