On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 03:51 PM, Avi Bryant wrote:

> On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Colin Putney wrote:
>
>>
>> On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 02:22 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>>
>>> And now that we got this let's go back to the roots for real. Why do 
>>> we
>>> actually write numbers big-endian? ;-)
>>
>> Well, actually we write them little-endian in a right-to-left script.
>> Whoever stole arabic numerals from the arabs apparently didn't bother
>> to do the required digit-swapping when using them with the Roman
>> alphabet. Perhaps it was because Roman numerals were big-endian.
>
> ... except that I thought "arabic" numerals originated in India, and 
> most
> Indian scripts are left to right.

Yeah, but that's much more murky. There was all sorts of mathematics 
going on in India and Arabia during the Dark Ages - it was only dark in 
Europe. My understanding is that the invention of zero happened after 
the Arabs were aware of the Indian notation, and that's when it became 
a real place-value system that we'd recognize. Certainly the Arabs 
adapted it to their own purposes.

It was more stable by the time it reached Spain, though, so the 
transition there is fairly clean cut.  Of course, I don't really know 
what I'm talking about, not being a historian and all. I'm fascinated 
by this sort of thing though, so if anybody has good a good reference 
on the subject I'd like to know about it. Particularly the left-right 
part.

Colin