History of Computers - Base 10

Introduction

The Egyptians' number system dates back 4000-5000 years ago when they first began writing numbers down.^[1] As with their medical practices, the Egyptians were very advanced in their mathematics, and used them for dealing with real life situations such as "From a certain amount of grain, how many loaves can be baked?" and Given a ramp of length x and height y, how many bricks are needed?"^[2]

Overview

With such information as how many cattle does one own and how many crops were harvested crucial to the Egyptians for daily life but also the afterlife, a simpler number system was necessary. Although they had no need of a 0 digit, and so it was invented instead by the Arabs.^[3] The Egyptians became the first civilization to create a symbol for the number 10 after they had a base 10 math system. The symbols were for one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand and one million. The Egyptians were capable of addition, subtraction, multiplying and dividing by two, and the beginnings of Algebra. Ancient Egyptians, mainly priests and priestesses in charge of workers, were sophisticated enough to use two variables in their math equations.^[4]

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Significance

The Egyptians' advanced number system enabled them to build one of the eight wonders of the world, the Great Pyramid, but also paved the way for other civilizations such as the Roman Numerals. The Egyptian and Roman numerals made math much easier by creating symbols for the larger integers.