History of numbers

This is not about history of numerals or numeral systems. 2 Fractions and rational numbers
See History of numerals, History of ancient numeral systems, and History of the HinduArabic numeral system. Numbers like 3 + 1 = 22 , expressible as fractions in
7
7
which the numerator and denominator are whole numbers, are rational numbers. These make it possible to
measure such quantities as two and a quarter gallons and
six and a half miles.

3 Incommensurable magnitudes in
geometry and irrational numbers
In the fth century BC, one of the ancient Pythagoreans
showed that some quantities arising in geometry, including the length of the diagonal of a square, when the unit
of measurement is the length of the side of the square,
cannot be expressed as rational numbers. If the side of a
square were divided into ve segments of equal lengths,
and if the length of the diagonal of the square were equal
to that of exactly seven such short segments (which is
in fact a reasonable approximation, but not exact), then
those short segments would be what Euclid called a common measure of the side and the diagonal. What we
today would consider a proof that a number is irrational
Euclid called a proof that two lengths arising in geometry have no common measure, or are incommensurable.
Euclid included proofs of incommensurability of lengths
arising in geometry in his Elements.

4 Negative numbers
In the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, a pair of legs walking forward marked addition, and walking away subtraction. They were the rst known civilization to use negative numbers.

The Ishango bone on exhibition at the Royal Belgian Institute of

Natural Sciences

Negative numbers came into widespread use as a result

of their utility in accounting. They were used by late medieval Italian bankers.

Counting

Numbers that answer the question How many?" are 0, 1,

2, 3 and so on. These are

5 Some particular numbers

cardinal numbers. When used to indicate position in a

sequence they are ordinal numbers.
5.1 Zero
To the Pythagoreans and Greek mathematician Euclid,
the numbers were 2, 3, 4, 5, . . . Euclid did not consider By 1740 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. In Maya civilization zero was a numeral
1 to be a number.
1

with a shell shape as a symbol, with the plastron uppermost).

REFERENCES

6 Numeral systems
Main articles: List of numeral systems and Numeral
system

5.2

One

The ancient Egyptians represented all fractions (with the

exception of 2/3) in terms of sums of fractions with
numerator 1 and distinct denominators. For example, 2/5
= 1/3 + 1/15. Such representations are popularly known
as Egyptian Fractions or Unit Fractions.

The rst numeral system know is Babylonian numeric system, that has a 60 base, it was introduced in 3100 B.C.
and is the rst Positional numeral system known.
The rst known system with place value was the
Mesopotamian base 60 system (ca. 3400 BC) and the
earliest known base 10 system dates to 3100 BC in
Egypt.[10]

Roman numerals evolved primitives system of cutting

notches.[11] It was once believed that they came from alphabetic symbols or from pictographs, but these theories
The earliest written approximations of are found in have been disproved.[12][13]
Egypt and Babylon, both within one percent of the true
value. In Babylon, a clay tablet dated 19001600 BC
has a geometrical statement that, by implication, treats 7 See also
as 25/8 = 3.1250.[1] In Egypt, the Rhind Papyrus, dated
around 1650 BC but copied from a document dated to
Number
1850 BC, has a formula for the area of a circle that treats
as (16/9)2 3.1605.[1]
Tally stick

5.3

Astronomical calculations in the Shatapatha Brahmana

(ca. 4th century BC) use a fractional approximation of
339/108 3.139 (an accuracy of 9104 ).[2] Other Indian
sources by about 150 BC treat as 10 3.1622[3]

Prehistoric numerals
Egyptian numerals
Maya numerals

5.4

The rst references to the constant e were published in

1618 in the table of an appendix of a work on logarithms
by John Napier. However, this did not contain the constant itself, but simply a list of logarithms calculated from
the constant. It is assumed that the table was written by
William Oughtred. The discovery of the constant itself
is credited to Jacob Bernoulli,[4][5] who attempted to nd
the value of the following expression (which is in fact e):

Chinese numerals
Abjad numerals
HinduArabic numeral system
History of writing ancient numbers
Numeral system
Positional notation
Non-standard positional numeral systems

)n
(
1
.
1+
n
n

Radix

The rst known use of the constant, represented by the

letter b, was in correspondence from Gottfried Leibniz to
Christiaan Huygens in 1690 and 1691. Leonhard Euler
introduced the letter e as the base for natural logarithms,
writing in a letter to Christian Goldbach of 25 November
1731.[6][7] Euler started to use the letter e for the constant
in 1727 or 1728, in an unpublished paper on explosive
forces in cannons,[8] and the rst appearance of e in a
publication was Eulers Mechanica (1736).[9] While in the
subsequent years some researchers used the letter c, e was
more common and eventually became the standard.

Future of mathematics

lim

History of mathematics

8 References
[1] Arndt & Haenel 2006, p. 167
[2] Chaitanya, Krishna. A prole of Indian culture. Indian
Book Company (1975). p.133.
[3] Arndt & Haenel 2006, p. 169

[4] Jacob Bernoulli considered the problem of continuous

compounding of interest, which led to a series expression
for e. See: Jacob Bernoulli (1690) Qustiones nonnull
de usuris, cum solutione problematis de sorte alearum,
propositi in Ephem. Gall. A. 1685 (Some questions
about interest, with a solution of a problem about games of
chance, proposed in the Journal des Savants (Ephemerides
Eruditorum Gallican), in the year (anno) 1685.**), Acta
eruditorum, pp. 219223. On page 222, Bernoulli poses
the question: Alterius natur hoc Problema est: Quritur,
si creditor aliquis pecuni summam fnori exponat, ea
lege, ut singulis momentis pars proportionalis usur annu sorti annumeretur; quantum ipsi nito anno debeatur?" (This is a problem of another kind: The question
is, if some lender were to invest [a] sum of money [at]
interest, let it accumulate, so that [at] every moment [it]
were to receive [a] proportional part of [its] annual interest; how much would he be owed [at the] end of [the]
year?) Bernoulli constructs a power series to calculate the
answer, and then writes: " qu nostra serie [mathematical expression for a geometric series] &c. major est. si
a = b, debebitur plu quam 2 1 2 a & minus quam 3a. (
which our series [a geometric series] is larger [than].
if a = b, [the lender] will be owed more than 2 1 2 a and
less than 3a.) If a = b, the geometric series reduces to the
series for a e, so 2.5 < e < 3. (** The reference is to a
problem which Jacob Bernoulli posed and which appears
in the Journal des Savans of 1685 at the bottom of page
314.)
[5] Carl Boyer; Uta Merzbach (1991). A History of Mathematics (2nd ed.). Wiley. p. 419.
[6] Lettre XV. Euler Goldbach, dated November 25, 1731
in: P. H. Fuss, ed., Correspondance Mathmatique et
Physique de Quelques Clbres Gomtres du XVIIIeme
Sicle (Mathematical and physical correspondence of
some famous geometers of the 18th century), vol. 1, (St.
Petersburg, Russia: 1843), pp. 5660 ; see especially
page 58. From page 58: " ( e denotat hic numerum, cujus logarithmus hyperbolicus est = 1), " ( (e denotes
that number whose hyperbolic [i.e., natural] logarithm is
equal to 1) )
[7] Remmert, Reinhold (1991). Theory of Complex Functions. Springer-Verlag. p. 136. ISBN 0-387-97195-5.
[8] Euler, Meditatio in experimenta explosione tormentorum
nuper instituta.
[9] Leonhard Euler, Mechanica, sive Motus scientia analytice
exposita (St. Petersburg (Petropoli), Russia: Academy of
Sciences, 1736), vol. 1, Chapter 2, Corollary 11, paragraph 171, p. 68. From page 68: Erit enim dc/c = dy
ds/rdx seu c = e dy ds/rdx ubi e denotat numerum, cuius logarithmus hyperbolicus est 1. (So it [i.e., c, the speed] will
be dc/c = dy ds/r dx or c = e dy ds/rdx , where e denotes the
number whose hyperbolic [i.e., natural] logarithm is 1.)
[10] Egyptian Mathematical Papyri Mathematicians of the
African Diaspora. Math.bualo.edu. Retrieved 201201-30.
[11] Ifrah, Georges (2000) The Universal History of Numbers:
From Prehistory to the Invention of the Computer, Wiley.
pp. 191194. ISBN 0-471-37568-3.

[12] Keyser, Paul (1988). The origin of the Latin numerals 1

to 1000. American Journal of Archeology. 92: 529546.
JSTOR 505248.
[13] Chrisomalis, Stephen (2010) Numerical Notation: A Comparative History.

9 Cited sources
Arndt, Jrg; Haenel, Christoph (2006). Pi Unleashed. Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-540-665724.

10

10
10.1

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