There Is No Zero In Roman Numerals. Who Invented Zero, And When?

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SPECULATIVE SCIENCEThere is no zero in Roman numerals. Who invented zero, and when?

  • THE ancient Greeks were aware of the concept of zero (as in 'We have no marbles'), but didn't think of it as a number. Aristotle had dismissed it because you couldn't divide by zero and get a down-to-earth result. The Romans never used their numerals for arithmetic, thus avoiding the need to keep a column empty with a zero symbol. Addition and subtraction were done instead on an abacus or counting frame. About 1,500 years ago in India a symbol was used to represent an abacus column with nothing in it. At first this was just a dot; later it became the '0' we know today. In the 8th century the great Arab mathematician, al-Khwarizmi, took it up and the Arabs eventually brought the zero to Europe. It wasn't warmly received; the Italians in particular were very suspicious of any change to their ancestors' system of numerals. In 1259 a law was passed forbidding bankers from using zero or any of the new Arab numerals in their accounts.

    George Auckland and Martin Gorst, Away With Numbers, BBC Television, London W5.

  • A MONK called Abelard, who kept the accounts for a monastery in the West Midlands, heard of the new system and went to Spain during the Moorish occupation. He converted to Islam and returned to his monastery after 20 years' study with the precious knowledge of nothing.

    Dennis Salt, Horsham, W Sussex.

  • MORE information can be found in Chapter 7 of Professor Lancelot Hogben's book, Mathematics for the Million.

    Leslie Farmelo, Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex.

  • THE ANCIENT Mayans independently developed the concept of zero. Their symbol for it was a stylised shell. Interestingly, they also developed a base 20, rather than base 10, arithmetic system.

    Martin Speight, Austin, USA ([email protected])

  • Roman use of the abacus (or rather, counting boards) did not eliminate the problem of the zero, it just freed them from the need for a symbol. The abacus' empty space caused by going from 9 to 10 is just as much a zero as an 0 on the page. Use of a Zero symbol allowed arithmatic to move from the abacus to the page.

    Peter Brooke, Newmachar UK

  • Before the dawn of Islam, all Western people were using the Roman number system, after the dawn of Islam, Many many Muslim Merchants went to the West. They taught the Arabic number system to Western Merchants. This meant that Arabic numerals reached the West. But today, college and university teachers do not know the history of number and numeral systems and how the Arab scientist converted the ten numerals into number one and what the reason for this was. For all that hidden knowledge read this Website. http://numerals.0catch.com/

    Munawar Butt, Karachi, Pakistan

  • Aryabhatta (476-550 AD) an Indian mathematician invented zero as a digit. Not sure since when it has been used in the Europe.

    G Padma, East Ham UK

  • Zero was invented in Kemet (Egypt) it is known as "Nfr" and on the ancient scripts the Nfr symbol or blank space is written, applied in the structures of the Ancient African Egyptians.

    Ishmael, Naples United States

  • There is no Roman numeral for zero as there was no need for a numeral to represent it. The system of Roman numerals was developed as a means of trading and bartering. Instead of a Roman numeral they used the Latin word 'nulla', which meant zero. The 'number' zero was invented in numerous cultures across the world at different times. However, it is generally accepted that the Indian astronomer Brahmagupta put forward the concept of zero for the first time, around 600AD. Source: Roman Numerals Kind regards, Ben

    Ben Allan, Swansea Wales

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