Yes, I did – because apparently someone in India did first.
Let me explain.
In a previous post, I gave credit for “nothing” to the wrong culture:
“It is the spatial equivalent of the Arabs inventing the Zero.”
Well, as Occam’s RazR reader Atanu Dey points out ever so elequently:
“The first indubitable appearance of a symbol for zero appears in 876 in India on a stone tablet in Gwalior. Documents on copper plates, with the same small o in them, dated back as far as the sixth century AD, abound.”
So, it is the Arabs who borrowed “nothing” from the Indians, and took “nothing” to the West. I “scored zero” for my historical knowledge, while it was an Indian who first “scored a zero” on a copper plate.
I stand proudly corrected. And visit Atanu – he’s a very bright guy.
[tags]Ike Pigott, Occam’s RazR, India, mathematics, Atanu Dey[/tags]
