Unit 7, Lesson 3, Ex.2c)

Professor Dalton: Understanding and working with zero is the basis of our world today; without zero there would be no calculus, financial accounting, and, finally, computers. When we think of one hundred, three thousand, the image that we have in our mind is that of a digit followed by a few zeros. The zero here plays the role of a placeholder. If we were missing one zero, that would seriously change the amount. Just imagine having one zero erased (or added) to your salary or pocket money!

Host: And how old is zero?

Professor Dalton: It’s difficult to say. The thing is zero was invented independently by several civilizations. The number system we use today – Arabic, though it in fact came originally from India – is relatively new. For centuries people marked quantity with a variety of symbols and figures. The ancient Sumerians were the first to develop a counting system, which was positional: that is the placement of a particular symbol relative to others denoted its value. The Sumerian system was handed down to Babylonians in 2000 BC and it was them who first thought of a mark to show that a number was absent from a column; just as 2014 signifies that there are no hundreds in that number. The greatest mathematicians of Ancient Greece did not have a name for zero, nor did their system have a placeholder as did the Babylonian. It was the Indians who began to understand zero both as a symbol and as an idea. The Maya of Central America also invented zero.

Host: Did they solve the mystery of division by zero?

Professor Dalton: This had to wait for Isaac Newton and Leibniz. But it would still be a few centuries before zero reached Europe. Adding, subtracting, and multiplying by zero are relatively simple operations. But division by zero confused even great minds. In the 1600’s Newton and Leibniz solved this problem independently and opened the world to innumerable possibilities. Calculus was born without which we wouldn’t have physics, engineering, and many aspects of economics and finance.

Host: In the twenty-first century zero is so familiar that to talk about it seems more like much ado about nothing. But if we hadn’t discovered the zero, what sort of maths would we be able to do?

Professor Dalton: I think that without the concept of zero, algebra would have stagnated at about the stage it reached around 800 AD. It is precisely understanding and working with this nothing that has allowed civilization to progress. Mathematics is a global language, so zero exists and is used everywhere.

Host: Yet, until you go to algebra, there is really no need for zero. Thank you very much, Professor Dalton, for taking us down the history lane to hear the tale of zero…

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