The Birth of Zero

Transcript

The Birth of Zero For thousands of years, the number line simply started at 1. If you had five apples and gave them all away, you didn't have a number to represent what you had left; you just had a void. MILLENNIA AGO: THE OLD WAY THE APPLE PROBLEM: UNCOUNTABLE VOIDNumbers started at 1. Zero didn't exist as a number. Lack of apples was just a 'Void', not a number.Other ancient civilisations, like the Babylonians and Mayans, realised they needed a way to show an empty space in a number (like the empty "tens" column in the number 105), so they used placeholder symbols. EARLIER CIVILIZATIONS: PLACEHOLDERS BABYLONIANSUsed placeholders you could not add or subtract 'Nothing'. for empty columns in a grid (like • ). MAYANSHowever, they never treated that placeholder as an actual, operational number that you could add, subtract, or multiply. It took the work of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta in 628 CE to formally transform this void into a true mathematical number. INDIAN BREAKTHROUGH: THE REVOLUTION OF BRAHMAGUPTA Inspired by Indian philosophical traditions. FORMAL TRANSFORMATION: VOID BECOMES A NUMBER math breakthroughs!COMPLETE SYSTEM: THE FOUNDATION OF ZERO Now complete with 0 as a foundation.