The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hindu-Arabic Numerals, by
David Eugene Smith and Louis Charles Karpinski

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Title: The Hindu-Arabic Numerals

Author: David Eugene Smith
Louis Charles Karpinski

Release Date: September 14, 2007 [EBook #22599]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HINDU-ARABIC NUMERALS ***

Produced by David Newman, Chuck Greif, Keith Edkins and
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http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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Transcriber's Note:

The following codes are used for characters that are not present in the
character set used for this version of the book.

[=a] a with macron (etc.)
[.g] g with dot above (etc.)
['s] s with acute accent
[d.] d with dot below (etc.)
[d=] d with line below
[H)] H with breve below

THE

HINDU-ARABIC NUMERALS

BY
DAVID EUGENE SMITH
AND
LOUIS CHARLES KARPINSKI

BOSTON AND LONDON
GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DAVID EUGENE SMITH
AND LOUIS CHARLES KARPINSKI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
811.7

THE ATHENAEUM PRESS
GINN AND COMPANY . PROPRIETORS
BOSTON . U.S.A.

* * * * *

{iii}

PREFACE

So familiar are we with the numerals that bear the misleading name of
Arabic, and so extensive is their use in Europe and the Americas, that it
is difficult for us to realize that their general acceptance in the
transactions of commerce is a matter of only the last four centuries, and
that they are unknown to a very large part of the human race to-day. It
seems strange that such a labor-saving device should have struggled for
nearly a thousand years after its system of place value was perfected
before it replaced such crude notations as the one that the Roman conqueror
made substantially universal in Europe. Such, however, is the case, and
there is probably no one who has not at least some slight passing interest
in the story of this struggle. To the mathematician and the student of
civilization the interest is generally a deep one; to the teacher of the