Chapters 5-8 Summary and Analysis

The abacus will never go out of style and is both a calculator that needs no electricity and a work of art. The older an abacus gets, the more beautiful it gets and never needs a software upgrade. People pit modern technology against the ways of yesteryear to prove that today's machines are far superior. One man set out to show he could accomplish the same task faster with an abacus than a computer. The computer was forty-four seconds faster than the man with the abacus, but the computer's answer, unlike the abacus was wrong. There will always be a place for the tried and true and it should offer one a sense of comfort.

San Saba is a quiet town in central Texas, formed in April of 1757, when Colonel Diego Ortiz de Parilla and five priests began a...