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> Overall, what is perhaps most impressive in this story is the fact that symbols which first appeared in print only about five hundred years ago have become pa
by yaix 14y ago
> Overall, what is perhaps most impressive in this story is the fact that symbols which first appeared in print only about five hundred years ago have become part of what is perhaps the most universal “language.”
They appeared just at the right time to be carried around the world by conquista and colonialism. Same goes for time notation, etc.
- kps 14y agoThey appeared just at the right time to be carried around the world by movable type. Same goes for non-mathematical punctuation. To put it another way, mass production of text froze the symbols that happened to be in use at the time.
- chiph 14y agoOne of the interesting things is why are there 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes per hour, etc? Mathematically, those values are useful because they can be factored in many ways. But who picked them? I was at the British Museum one time, and they had an horological exhibit (clocks throughout the ages), so I asked one of the curators. He said it was the Babylonians that chose those values. But since this thread is about notation, I should be asking who picked the colon (:) as the time separator that is generally used. And are there other conventions for this?