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Location arithmetic is the additive binary numeral systems, which John Napier explored as a computation technique in his treatise Rabdology , both symbolically and on a chessboard-like grid.
Napier's terminology, derived from using the positions of counters on the board to represent numbers, is potentially misleading because the numbering system is, in facts, non-positional in current vocabulary.
During Napier's time, most of the computations were made on boards with tally-marks or jetons. So, unlike how it may be seen by the modern reader, his goal was not to use moves of counters on a board to multiply, divide and find square roots, but rather to find a way to compute symbolically with pen and paper.
However, when reproduced on the board, this new technique did not require mental trial-and-error computations nor complex carry memorization. He was so pleased by his discovery that he said in his preface: