Homeschooling and Education

What’s in a number? In the case of the number zero, quite a bit. The
story of this humblest of numbers - after all, it stands for nothing -
is so interesting that in recent years several journalists have written
popular books tracing its history. Friendships have been ended,
philosophical battles engaged in, heretics excommunicated, and
battleships sunk - all because of zero.
 
As Charles Seife points
out in one of the best of these books, Zero: The Biography Of A
Dangerous Idea, the concept of zero was developed by Babylonian
mathematicians. Earlier peoples had no idea of the concept of zero, and
no use for it. The most ancient civilizations seem to have used no
numbers except
“one”, “two”, and “many”. But the Babylonians used
the abacus - a sort of ancient computer in which pebbles are arranged
into different columns to keep track of amounts - to figure large
numbers.

“Adding numbers on an abacus,” Seife writes, “is as
simple as moving the stones up and down. Stones in different columns
have different values, and by manipulating them a skilled user can add
large numbers with great speed.”

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