When was integers invented

Initially numbers were used for accounting. Thus, it seems, the numbering systems initially appeared around the time of the Neolithic revolution. Neolithic revolution signifies the change in society, which is characterised by the appearance of organized agriculture, as well as state power. With new technology the food could be produced in excess, stored and redistributed.

Linguistics confirms that languages got numerals around this change as well. This is roughly when integers were invented. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Who invented the integers? Ask Question. Asked 7 years ago. Active 6 months ago. Viewed 15k times. Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Conifold Conifold I tacitly assumed that it was the first one conceived, but now that I think about it it's possible that geometric infinity of extension or divisibility preceded it.

I was hoping that some early document like Rhind or Plimpton had "and so on" in it or something like that hinting at realization of indefinite continuation of integers, but the answers suggest that probably not. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes.

Best source: O. Exact sciences in antiquity. Improve this answer. Alexandre Eremenko Alexandre Eremenko 41k 2 2 gold badges 62 62 silver badges bronze badges. I agree that mathematics in surviving papyri is not overwhelming, but they deal with practical calculations, and priests were secretive, so we might not have the full story. Something in Egypt impressed Greeks enough to single them out as the only non-"barbarians". Both Pythagoras and Thales according to the much later accounts indeed traveled to Egypt.

However, as I said there was not much in Egypt that they could learn and bring home. Indeed it is nothing if not bizarre that modern scholars of the Greek world should go to great lengths to dismiss such claims on the part of the authors of the primary texts themselves, to instead rely on the advice of modern Egyptologists that the ancient Egyptians had no such knowledge. Show 8 more comments. According to Wikipedia Negative numbers appeared for the first time in history in the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art", which in its present form dates from the period of the Chinese Han Dynasty BC — AD , but may well contain much older material.

The same article further says that, "The positive and negative numbers did not actually become part of a single "number line" today's "set of integers" until the 's or 's. Amit Tyagi Amit Tyagi 1, 12 12 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges. But I still wonder if anyone before Pythagoreans thought of them as "neverending". This led to the need for counting and accounting. Anixx Anixx 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges. Featured on Meta.

For example approaching 5 from above means for example, starting with 5. Thus 5. So 'strong' numbers were called positive and 'weak' numbers negative.

The product of zero multiplied by a debt or fortune is zero. The product or quotient of two fortunes is one fortune. The product or quotient of two debts is one fortune. The product or quotient of a debt and a fortune is a debt.

The product or quotient of a fortune and a debt is a debt. The ancient Greeks did not really address the problem of negative numbers, because their mathematics was founded on geometrical ideas. Lengths, areas, and volumes resulting from geometrical constructions necessarily all had to be positive.

Their proofs consisted of logical arguments based on the idea of magnitude. Magnitudes were represented by a line or an area, and not by a number like 4. In this way they could deal with 'awkward' numbers like square roots by representing them as a line. For example, you can draw the diagonal of a square without having to measure it see note 2 below. Negative numbers did not begin to appear in Europe until the 15th century when scholars began to study and translate the ancient texts that had been recovered from Islamic and Byzantine sources.

This began a process of building on ideas that had gone before, and the major spur to the development in mathematics was the problem of solving quadratic and cubic equations. As we have seen, practical applications of mathematics often motivate new ideas and the negative number concept was kept alive as a useful device by the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli - in his Summa published in , where he is credited with inventing double entry book-keeping.

In the 17th and 18th century, while they might not have been comfortable with their 'meaning' many mathematicians were routinely working with negative and imaginary numbers in the theory of equations and in the development of the calculus. Negative numbers and imaginaries are now built into the mathematical models of the physical world of science, engineering and the commercial world. There are many applications of negative numbers today in banking, commodity markets, electrical engineering, and anywhere we use a frame of reference as in coordinate geometry, or relativity theory.