Author: Chester H. Page

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2017-10-27

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780265802762

Excerpt from The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, 1875-1975 A very important new development appears in the cuneiform texts of the Sumerians: their symbol for 60 was the same as that for 1 and the value to be attributed to this symbol depends on its position in the number. So the Sumerians really introduced positional notation in writing numbers, contrary to the Egyptians who repeated the symbols for 1, 10, 100, etc., as many times as was needed to symbolize large numbers. This invention of positional notation is well known to have been ofthe utmost importance for the simplification of numerical calculations, but it Would still take a long time before the decimal system of the Egyptians was combined with the positional notation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.