Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1887 — Letters and Numbers. [ARTICLE]

Letters and Numbers.

The Greeks used the letters of the alphabet for numerals. The cumbersome Bystem used by the ltomans, and called after them, consisted of strokes (I-11-111-IIII) to indicate the four fingers, and two strokes joined (V) to represent the hand, or live fingers. Ten was a picture of two hands, or two V’s (X). But when the Eomaus and Greeks worked at the higher mathematics, or attempted hard sums in arithmetic, they are much more likely to have used letters, in order to avoid the clumsiness of these numerals; in other words, they used what looked like a kind of algebra. We know that they tried to simplify the Roman numerals at Borne by making four and nine with three strokes instead of four, by placing an I before the V, and an I before the X (IV and IX). Our use of the numerals which we call “Arabic” is comparatively recent, and it is believed that the Arabs got these numbers from .India several centuries after the ICpran was written, or about eight hundred years after Christ. Whether the Indian numerals were originally pari of some ancient alphabet, or a series of shortened signs originally somewhat like the Roman numerals that we still use, is not really decided. The numbers used by the peoples of India who wrote in Sanskrit were very like the figures 1,2, 3,4, 5, (;, 7,8, 0, and 0, that we use to-day. Even closer ; resemblances will be found if one goes back to the earliest forms of our numerals; for, during tbe last thousand •years, our numbers have undergone i some slight changes. Together with I these numerals, the Arabs learned from India how to do sums by algebra. For algebra, though an Arabic word, is a science of which the Arabs were ignorant before they reached India. It may be said that the invention of these numerals and of algebra for the higher mathematics stamps the old Hindoos as one of the most wonderful races of the world.— Henry Eckford, in St. Nicholas.