Numbers are the cornerstone of the building of mathematics, and they are also the earliest mathematical objects that people study.
Millions of years ago. Our ancestors only knew "yes", "nothing" and "much".
The concept of "less", but I don't know what it is. With the progress of civilization, these are ambiguous.
Ideas cannot meet the needs of production and life. For example, China has The Book of Changes.
In ancient times, knots were ruled. When an important event happens, just hit one on the rope.
A knot as a marker.
Although this method is simple, it at least shows that people already have the concept of number.
After writing appeared, people tried to record mathematics in the form of symbols. So it appeared.
Various recording methods are introduced. The ancient Egyptians used "|" to indicate one and "∨" to indicate two;
The ancient Romans used "I" for one and "II" for two. This method is effective, but
But when the quantity is very large, it is very inconvenient to record. For example, if we want to express for 100 hours, do we have to write?
A hundred "|"? Of course, the ancient Romans also saw this problem and invented it.
They are represented by Roman numerals ⅰ, ⅱ, ⅲ, ⅳ, ⅴ, ⅶ, ⅷ, ⅸ, ⅹ, L and C respectively.
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 10,50, 100。 It seems that the problem has been solved,
However, it is still very difficult to express 10 thousand. This is why Roman numerals are not widely used.
The failure of Roman numerals shows that any counting method that wants each number to correspond to a symbol is
It's in vain. It was not until the eighth century AD that Indians invented a kind of medicine containing only 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
The notation of symbols 7, 8, 9 and 9, and it is agreed that the position of the number determines the size of the value. For example, numbers
In the word 89, 8 means eight tens and 9 means nine ones. This means that any number is light and one.
For something. As a result, this invention was quickly brought into the Arab capital Baghdad by businessmen. and
Soon spread, called Arabic numerals. Because this symbol is concise and clear, it is
It is still in use today. Become the universal language of mathematics in the world. No wonder Engels called it "the most wonderful hair"
Ming ".
The origin of Arabic numerals
There are many numbering methods in the world, one of which is Arabic numerals: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
In fact, Arabic numerals were not invented by Arabs, but by ancient Indians.
Ancient Indians carved some horizontal lines on stone tablets to indicate numbers, one horizontal line indicated 1 and the other horizontal line indicated 2 ... Later, they used palm leaves or birch bark as writing materials and connected some strokes, for example, two horizontal lines of 2 were written as z, three horizontal lines of 3 were written as z, and so on.
In the 8th century AD, an Indian mathematician named Kank came to Baghdad, the capital of Arabia, with digital books and astronomical charts. At this time, China's papermaking had just been introduced into Arabia. As a result, his book was quickly translated into Arabic and spread in the Arabian Peninsula, and Arabic numerals also spread to all parts of Arabia.
With the commercial exchanges between the East and the West, these figures were introduced to Europe by Arab businessmen in the12nd century. Europeans love this convenient and applicable notation, and they think it is Arabic numerals, which has caused this historical misunderstanding. Although people later knew the truth of the matter, they never corrected it because they were used to it.
After Arabic numerals spread to European countries, their appearance gradually changed due to reproduction. After more than 65,438+0,000 years of continuous improvement, it was not until 65,438+0,480 that the writing of these numbers was similar to the current writing. 1522, Arabic numerals appeared in the book "The Englishman and Stowe", which was basically consistent with the current writing.
Because Arabic numerals and their decimal notation have many advantages, they are gradually spread all over the world and used by all countries in the world.