Everybody in the first grade at Russian schools had. It is not for the purpose of using this device in the future, but to learn how calculate faster. You use not only imagination and vision, thinking about figures or writing them, but a child can also "touch" the "figures", which for some people is faster way to learn and remember. For the same purposes counting rods, cards, marbles, etc... can be used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_rods