Why we read Arabic numerals backwards
In Arabic script, running from right to left, the `figures of the Indians' were also written from right to left. Reading a number in the positional place value system would thus begin with the lowest value, followed by the figure for the decimal value, etc. In the earliest Latin representations of Hindu-Arabic numerals, these were copied in the same order; hence the symbols were introduced as the sequence \(9, 8, 7, 6, \ldots,\) not as \(1, 2, 3, \ldots.\) The translation of explanations in Arabic into Latin therefore caused problems, since an earlier position in Arabic became a later position in a Latin text: a `zero' before `one' in Arabic (meaning ten and written 10) became a `zero' after `one' in Latin with the result, that numbers began with the highest position. The article discusses several examples from early Latin texts illustrating the difficulties authors had before, by the early thirteenth century, most of the algorisms had fully adapted the Arabic numerals to their Latin context.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0964.00010].
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