Numbers

 I usually get two questions from students who don't like math.  The first is "Who invented Math?" followed by "Who invented numbers?"  They hate hearing that numbers developed to meet the needs of commerce, government, and business.

Originally, it is said that ancient man understood the concept of one, two, and many but the ability to write down actual symbols representing quantities came much later.  It developed as civilization had need to measure land, tax people and lands, inventory, etc.

It is known that numbers originally began with one since the concept of zero came along much later.  Archeologists found the Ishango Bone dates back about 20,000 years.  It was found in the Congo and seems to be a counting object.  However, it is not sure what it was used to count.  As far as real numbers being used in a civilization, Ancient Sumeria has records of counting back to 4000 BC.  The records indicate some of the earliest arithmetic using addition and subtraction when keeping tract of livestock, crops, or goods.

About 1000 yers later, in 3000 BC, the Egyptians changed the meaning of one from only counting to a unit of measurement.  The Egyptians were responsible for standardizing units with the cubit so they could officially measure pyramids, temples, and other buildings.  The cubit was the length of a man's forearm from elbow to fingertip.  They kept an official cubit in temples so any copies were made off of that one were the same length.  In Greece, Pythagorus made a contribution in the form of identifying even and odd numbers. He felt odd numbers were male and even ones were female.

Another Greek mathematician, Archimedes, loved playing with all sorts of things including turning spheres into cylinders.  It was this discovery that allowed people to take a map from a globe and make a flat copy of it.  The Romans were not particularly interested in mathematics due to their numerals being extremely wieldy.  They used a counting board(an early form of the abacus) to do math because they couldn't do much more than adding and subtracting.  Their math stagnated.

One of the biggest developments in numbers came out of India around 500 AD. They invented Zero which didn't exist up until that point.  They used the basic digits from 1 to 9, added in zero and had the ability to write extremely large numbers.  About 250 years later, the Persians contributed fractions to the number pot.  According to the Koran, all land had to be divided among the children and fractions developed as a way to make this happen.  In addition, Muslins also contributed Algebra and Quadratic equations.

These Arabic numbers spread out across the world to Northern Africa where Fibonacci, ran into them and brought them back to Europe in the 1200's.  He was attracted to them and enjoyed learning more about these numbers and their use in Mathematics.  On the other hand, it took a while before Europeans were willing to accept these numbers instead of the Roman ones they'd been using for quite a while.  The Italians called zero cipha but they viewed it with suspicion so it became the word for secret codes or cipher.  Eventually, people accepted it because it made business so much easier.

Prior to the Catholic Reformation, people did not charge interest on loans because the church said it was a sin to do so but after the Reformation, it became legal and the new system made it easier to calculating interest out 12 places. Roman numerals only allowed them to go out 2 places.

In the late 17th century a German created a way for numbers to be expressed using only zero's and ones. It is now known as the binary system.  He also designed a machine that used binary but didn't build it.  This type of machine came into being in 1944 during World War II.  So now you have a short history of numbers to show how no one person created it but it evolved as the need for things arose.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a good day.