1 Feb
2021
1 Feb
'21
11:40 a.m.
On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:13 PM, David Bridgham via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
...
Sure, one can get into the story that our numbers come from Arabic and
Arabic is written right-to-left so in fact they were originally
little-endian and just didn't get flipped around when incorporated into
left-to-right languages but that's all lost in the past. Today, we
write numbers, in English, big-endian so it's no surprise at all that
some computers followed that common practice.
In Hebrew at least, numbers are written left to right. Also, as I understand it, in
Arabic our numbers are called "Indian numbers" in recognition of the fact that
they originated in India. They came to Europe via Arabia, but that's not their point
of origin apparently.
paul