The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski.

  • David Eugene Smith
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hindu-Arabic numerals / by David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    9 and it had no particular promise. Not until centuries later did the system have any standing in the world of busi- ness and science; and had the place value which now characterizes it, and which requires a zero, been worked out in Greece, we might have been using Greek numerals to-day instead of the ones with which we are familiar. Of the first number forms that the world used this is not the place to speak. Many of them are interesting, but none had much scientific value. In Europe the in- vention of notation was generally assigned to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean until the critical period of about a century ago, — sometimes to the Hebrews, some- times to the Egyptians, but more often to the early trading Phoenicians.1 The idea that our common numerals are Arabic in origin is not an old one. The mediaeval and Renaissance writers generally recognized them as Indian, and many of them expressly stated that they were of Hindu origin.2 1 “ Discipulus. Quis primus invenit numerum apud Ilebrseos et JEgyptios ? Magister. Abraham primus invenit numerum apud Hebneos, deinde Moses ; et Abraham tradidit istam scientiam numeri ad vEgyptios, et docuit eos: deinde Josephus.” [Bede, De computo dialogus (doubtfully assigned to him), Opera omnia, Paris, 1862, Vol. I, p. 650.] “ Alii referunt ad Phoenices inventores arithmetical, propter eandem commerciorum caussam : Alii ad Indos: Ioannes de Sacrobosco, cujus sepulchrum est Lutetise in comitio Maturinensi, refert ad Arabes.” [Ramus, Arithmetical libri dvo, Basel, 1569, p. 112.] Similar notes are given by Peletarius in his commentary on the arithmetic of Gemma Frisius (1563 ed., fol. 77), and in his own work (1570 Lyons ed., p. 14) : “La valeur des Figures commence au coste dextre tirant vers le coste senestre: au rebours de notre maniere d’escrire par ce que la premiere prattique est venue des Chaldees: ou des Pheniciens, qui out 6t6 les premiers traffiquers de marohan- dise.” 2 Maximus Planudes (c. 1330) states that “ the nine symbols come from the Indians.” [Wasclike’s German translation, Halle, 1878,