Ah, now I get it, a mystical device whose origin is lost in the mists of time that was so powerful that mere mortals prostrated themselves in the presence of those who could operate these magical devices. While modern technology has downgraded the heights of such ancient technology to electric idiots that can only count in 1s and 0s, a true master of such an ancient device could eat them alive with their analogue interface and magical methods of calculation that were completed while ordinary mortals were trying to work out how to enter that data with a keyboard.
Now the artisans of such magical devices were not willing to share their trade secrets so later researchers had to try and learn these secrets by trial and error and they have only had minor success in such an undertaking. So far they have learnt that the beads have to have the right mass and while this may have religious connotations, it also meant that the weight had to be right, too light and they bounced which produced rounding errors, too heavy and you trimmed off the last few digits.
Construction techniques were subject to rare and difficult to find materials, the tracks that the beads ran on had to have the lowest coefficience of friction possible so the very best was skinned with woven pubic hair of virgins that lived in red light areas. To get the right resonance, the frame to hang it all off was constructed from the wishbone of an ass then coloured with rare and exotic substances that were transported by camel train from equally rare and exotic locations in the world than no sane person would ever enter.
With such difficulties, now you know why the electric idiots have gained in popularity as a high end ancient device was generally beyond the means of the great unwashed.
