4 ms·

>Historically nobody performed arithmetic calculations by writing down a bunch of intermediate steps on scratch paper When I was in elementary school we used a

• jacobolus 10y ago
  From what I understand ancient Roman schoolchildren did most of their writing on wax tablets. It’s not clear when writing slates were first used; one of the earliest known examples is apparently 11th century India, though I’m not sure if they used chalk or some other writing material. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(writing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_(writing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard So to correct your statement: this was quite common in the 18th–20th century, well after the introduction of “arithmetic” and Hindu–Arabic numerals, which were popularized in Europe by Leonardo of Pisa’s 1202 book Liber Abaci (mostly material translated from Arabic sources). Before that (and for a few hundred years after in most parts of Europe), most calculation was done with counting boards. Here’s a famous 1503 woodcut showing a comparison between arithmetic (“Boethius”) vs. abacus (“Pythagoras”): http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/images/upload_library/46/Plimpton-Smith/8056Reischarithmetic.tif http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/images/upload_library...