Seeing Is Believing

The Vision of Georges Cuisenaire

How It All Began - A Mathematical Keyboard
Georges Cuisenaire (1891-1976), the inventor and namesake of Cuisenaire Rods, began his career as a teacher at the age of 20. A native of Thuin, Belgium, this dedicated primary school teacher arrived at the idea of expressing numbers in color through his lifelong knowledge of music. Because notes in music are based on specific mathematical intervals, he began to develop the idea of a "keyboard" for numbers.

In 1931, he experimented in the basement of his home with a set of rectangular rods sawed out of wood. The ten rods varied in length from 1 cm to 10 cm, with each length painted a different color. He soon found that his students could use the rods to help them "see" and understand numbers and their relationships to each other.

The results he obtained when he used these simple, colored rods to teach arithmetic were amazing. Not only did his pupils greatly improve their mathematics skills, but they also enjoyed and understood the work they did. It was clear that the analogy of a keyboard for mathematics worked.