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08827_Field_TCGG T592.txt
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1996-04-10
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circulation to the level of prices.
There was soon great concern with ways and means of
speeding up arithmetical calculations:
It is hard for us to realize how laborious and slow
were the means at the disposal of medieval Europeans for
dealing with calculations ‘which seem to us of the
simplest character’. The introduction of Arabic numbers
into Europe provided more easily manipulated counters
than the Roman numbers, and the use of Arabic numbers
seems to have spread rapidly towards the end of the
sixteenth century, at least on the Continent. Between
about 1590 and 1617 John Napier invented his curious
‘bones’ for calculating. He followed this invention with his
more celebrated discovery of logarithms. This was widely