zero

Number (written 0) that when added to any number leaves that number unchanged. It results when any number is subtracted from itself, or when any number is added to its negative. The product of any number with zero is itself zero.

History The word zero comes originally from the Hindi sunya, meaning ‘empty’, and travelled through Arabic (sifr), Latin (zephirum), eventually to become the English zero. The Greeks would distinguish between 109 and 190 by using completely different symbols for ‘9’ and ‘90’. The Babylonians found a partial use for zero in their sexagesimal system, namely in medial positions (‘109’) but not in final positions (‘190’). The need for zero arose, however, when a fully developed place value decimal system was developed by the Hindu-Arabic mathematicians in the 8th century AD. No longer could all numbers be expressed by simply using the nine figures 1 to 9. A sign ‘19’ could mean 109, 190, or simply 19. Without the zero all were as likely.

Along with other Hindu-Arabic numerals, zero entered Europe in the 13th century in the famous textbook of Leonardo of Pisa, Liber abaci (1202). Despite their obvious advantages the new numerals spread only slowly throughout Europe. As few could write and most officials counted with pebbles on checker boards or abaci, there was little call for a more sophisticated numeral system and it was not, in fact, until the 16th century that zero and the other Hindu-Arabic numerals became widely accepted.