Ore about Zero

Abstract

The origin of sexagesimal system may be related to early men's calculation of 360 days of a year. To quote from Florian Cajori's book, "A History of Mathematics" ,"Cantor offers the following theory : At first the Babylonians reckoned the year at 360 days. This led to the division of the circle in 360 degrees, each degree representing the daily amount of the supposed yearly revolution of the sun around the earth. Now they were, very probably, familiar with the fact that the radius can be applied to its circumference as a chord 6- times, and that each of these chords subtends an arc measuring exactly 60 degrees. Fixing their attention upon these degrees, the division into 30-parts may have suggested itself to them. Thus, when greater precision necessitated a sub-division of the degree, it was partitioned into 60 minutes. In this way the sexagesimal system came up with the base 60 - system. There is also an alternate suggestion. It is easy to count up to 60 with 5 - fingures of one hand and 12 knuckles of the other. There was one more compelling reason. Sumerians did not have the radix - point, the symbol we use to separate the integer-part from the fractional-part of the number. Sixty is a super composite numbers; which is divided by -

1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30 and 60.

Use of fraction is minimised in the sexagesimal or base - 60 system. Over the years, the Babylonians developed a method whereby a vacant - space is left in between two numbers to indicate a place without value. While some European Historians likened the "vacant-space" with modern zero, but truly, it is noting like zero. The vacant space is always between two numbers, never at the end of a number, the way we designate 30 to 300. In this paper, I have tried to explain the concept of zero in the light of modern - findings.