Saturday, February 17, 2007

126 - Origin of our numbers

Mathematics is hard to do without symbols for numbers, or numerals. In the first place, it was necessary for humans to invent symbols for numerals. Who invented the numerals that the whole world uses today? The Arabs back in the 9th century. The House of Wisdom in ancient Baghdad (Iraq) used the concept of counting angles to design the symbols for the numbers one through nine.






Count the angles in these symbols. These symbols gave rise to the numerals we all use today and they are known as Arabic numerals for this reason. The numeral for zero of course contains no angles.

Links - more on our numbers
even more on our numbers

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apparently, they're not all bomb throwing wierdos.

Mike said...

Baghdad at one time was the cradle of civilization. Was. Not much civilized going on there now.