This is the right answer. I was just saying that pretty much no one ever did it (that I'm aware of) before a machine came along to read and write that notation

This is the right answer. I was just saying that pretty much no one ever did it (that I'm aware of) before a machine came along to read and write that notation. I might be wrong. I'd love to see an example of 3+d arrays written as musical notation or something from the 16th Century.