Zero and the number system

This is the story of a very important number, but a number that wasn't always a number. In fact it was much less than a number until relatively recently. This is the story of Zero and it's a story that takes a tortuous and meandering route through 1,500 years of human history.

Today we enjoy zero in all its glory where it takes on two roles: The first is as a placeholder within our positional number system. Zero notes an absence of a value and it allows us to create huge numbers without the need to create new digits. So we know 30 is larger than 3 and 300 is larger than 30 and 3.

The second use of zero is as a number in its own right, the middleman between positive and negative one and enjoying nearly all the same benefits as other numbers.

We can subtract, add and multiply by zero but dividing by zero just doesn't work.For example, you can't divide 1 chicken by no chickens. You might suggest that the answer is infinity, but it's not, because infinity isn't really a number, it's a concept.

So with that much of information let’s begin the story….

The ancient Indian seem to be less concerned about military organization unlike Romans who like conquering stuff, unlike Romans the Indians devised a system that could cope with vast numbers they developed a different symbol for every number from one to nine.

The numbers we use today began life in India as early as 500 BC but then around 1,500 years ago someone (Aryabhata or Brahmagupta who knows) came up with a stupendous incredible extraordinary idea the biggest revolution in numbers that would change the world, invented an entirely new number

First time in human history someone had made nothing number, you might say what's all the fuss about I mean what's a wonderful about inventing a symbol that means nothing. But when you team 0 up with other numbers the results were spectacular, with just 10 digits you could make numbers infinitely large as well as infinitely small the Romans couldn't do that this enabled Indian science to storm ahead, Indian astronomers for example were centuries ahead of the others. Indian scientists worked out that the Earth spins on its axis and calculated the diameter of the globe and they were less than one percent off all this was possible because of 0.

The number system were a sensation and their fame soon began to spread across the globe. It made their way across the deserts of Arabia to take on one of the most sophisticated societies of the age in what is now Iraq. When Islam was little more than a hundred years old Baghdad was ruled by the great caliph.

The Arabs were great mathematician and were up to perform complex arithmetic but was unable not that they were incapable but it was just their number system holding them back.

But one day there arrived in the court an ambassador from India he had to present the great caliph with a gift of some sort but the Caliph was a man of infinite riches. It was hard to know what to give I mean I love Arabia t-shirt was not going to do the job.

The Ambassador however have thought long and hard about this and decided to present the Caliph with the greatest gift he could think off the gift of numbers actually we don't know for certain exactly how in the Islamic world adopted this number system but the Ambassador story is my favorite.

The Muslim scholars were bowled over by this new number system and they started performing brand new tricks with this new number system like quadratic equation, algebra, logarithmic and so more which enabled science mathematics and astronomy to reach new heights in the Middle East. The Indian number system became a smash hit throughout the Islamic world but on the other side of the Mediterranean christian Europe was still in the static grip of the old army of Roman and being Romans they weren't going to give way to the feisty newcomers that easily you have seen 300.

A showdown between the two systems was inevitable and when it came it could shape the destiny of the Western world. The beginning of the end the Roman numerals started on the shores of North Africa. A lot Muslim traders have been quick to adopt Indian number system and code for their business dealings by the end of the 12th century. The Indian numerals were in common use and it was in the business cities that the young man Fibonacci son of an Italian diplomat based in Algeria first notice the art of the Indians nine symbols and zero and when he grew up he decided to take them home in 1202.

Fibonacci wrote a book all about calculation, he is now regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and his book was pretty much a showcase for Indian number system and calculations on of his book of was aimed specifically at merchants showing them how useful is the New system for say calculating their profits. His book became a must-read for merchants.

Unfortunately ordinary people felt comfortable with the old numbers after all they'd live with them part of a thousand years. People have their suspicious that merchants are trying to cheat them using the new number system. The distrust went right to the top, in 1299 the city of Florence actually banned merchants from using the new numbers and account they had to use Roman numerals.

But no number was treated with more suspicion than zero it was a sign which creates confusion and difficulties.

The roman numerals were able to withstand this time.

But as business grows a new organization developed you know banks lending and borrowing stuff and with that comes the new concept of simple and compound interest.

Now this is the time the Indian number system strikes back.

Suppose I lend you some 10 pounds at half percent compound interest a month how much do you owe me at the end of the year. You don’t want to calculate that using roman numerals.

The old Roman system was simply no match for the Indian numerals and finally the Indian number system was adopted.

The Indian numerals made European navigation easier to calculate their latitude and so that they can cross the great ocean out of sight of land that's how they stumbled on America and the new numbers became the vocabulary of modern banking and modern numbers as we know.

But the biggest contribution of Indian numerals only 1 and 0 is yet to come.

Though sophisticated number system the human error can’t be avoided.

Columbus thought he got to India and in fact he got to the west indies because of human error in calculation of navigation.

But one man was determined to stop this human error and how you do that simple remove human, I mean built a machine, it all happened around 16 century.

A man named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz the one who hates Newton. He developed this new system more comfortable to machines to eliminate human error. So he got rid of the other numbers and developed a system using just one and zeros.

it's called the binary system.

It's perfect for a machine because machine doesn't really care too much about how big the numbers gets it can keep track of very long numbers and it is a very efficient way of adding numbers that's why machines love to put numbers into binary. It seemed the digital age was ready to take over the world but unfortunately he never built any sort of such machine.

It would have to wait another two hundred and sixty-five years before anyone could step into the line.

Meet Colossus the world's first working binary computer. Colossus is electronic in 1 & 0 and was created during the Second World War and installed in Britain's code-breaking center at Bletchley Park. It was used to crack the enemy's code before the Germans had even sharpen their pencils.

The technology that started here in Bletchley has changed our world forever and the use of binary system is the biggest contribution of zero.