31 May
2010
31 May
'10
12:58 a.m.
At 03:14 PM 5/30/2010, William Donzelli wrote:
The Roman merchants and engineers had a fairly standard
abacus thing,
so math for them was not as bad as one might think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus
Similar to the Japanese soroban, it says... and "undeniable proof that Romans
were using a device that exhibited a decimal, place value system, and the
inferred knowledge of a zero value as represented by a column with no beads
in a counted position. Furthermore, the bi-quinary nature of the integer
portion allowed for direct transcription from and to the written Roman
numerals. No matter what the true usage was, what cannot be denied is that
these instruments provide very strong arguments in favour of far greater
facility with practical mathematics known and practised by the Romans."
- John