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08828_Field_TCGG T593.txt
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16 lines
adopted all over Europe almost at once, and in
consequence arithmetical calculations were immensely
accelerated. (p. 17)
There then occurred an event that dramatizes the
separation of letters and numbers in a most striking way. In
Cultural Foundations of Industrial Civilization (pp. 17­18), Nef
cites the studies of Lucien Febvre concerning the sudden
reversal in calculation, so that “the ancient habit of adding and
subtracting from left to right, which still prevailed according to
Lucien Lefebvre, until the end of the sixteenth century, began
to be superseded by the much quicker way of making them
from right to left.” That is to say that the separation of letters
and numbers which had taken so long to achieve was finally
accomplished by dropping the reading habit of left to right in
the use of numbers. Nef spends time (p. 19) trying to resolve