H i s t o r y o f

M AT H E M AT I C S
S Y M B O L
Presented By: Christopher
Tranx Delos Reyes
• TheOne of the simplest mathematical statements possible
is 2+2=4.

While the concept is very easy to understand, when you

write it down you have to use mathematical symbols which
are, historically speaking, a relatively recent invention.

At one point, mathematicians were doing reasonably

complicated work without the benefit of symbols at all.
Something which is unthinkable today.
 The first people we know of who used
mathematics were the ancient Babylonians
and Sumerians. With their cuniform system
of writing, they were able to do reasonably
complicated mathematics.

Their numeral system was base-60, as

opposed to ours which is base-10. The theory
holds that two earlier people merged to
become the Sumerians and one group had a
system that was base-12 and the other had a
system that was base-5. They resolved the
difference by using 60, which was just 5 x 12.
They were able to solve quadratic equations,
knew about square and cube roots, and had
solved the Pythagorean theorem well before
Pythagoras.

However, they lacked a few things. They didn’t have a zero, which is
something I talked about in my episode about zero, and didn’t really
have any symbolic expressions to do equations.
It wouldn’t look like algebra as we are familiar with it.
• The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabs all
managed to do mathematics at some level
without the use of mathematical symbols.

• Algebra was actually named by Arab scholars

and it literally comes from “al-jabr” which means a
reunion of broken parts.

• Arab scholars probably took mathematics as far

as anyone in history up until that time, but they
still mostly weren’t using symbolic notation.
Plus Sign
The symbols we know and use today
weren’t created until the 15th century.

The first use of the plus sign was in

1489 by German mathematician
Johannes Widmann.

The plus sign just represents the

letter “t” which was a short form of
the Latin word “et” which means
“and”.
 Minus Sign
Likewise, Widmann was the first person to use the minus sign as
well. The minus sign is believed to come from a tilde which was
sometimes placed over a number to represent subtraction.

In his treatise, he explicitly defined the new terms which he created.

He said “was ? ist, das ist minus, und das + ist das mer”. Mer
being German for more.

There were other previous attempts to create symbols that did the
same thing, but they didn’t catch on. The Egyptians had a symbol
that could be used for addition and the mirror image of it could be
used for subtraction, but it never went beyond Egypt.
Multiplication Symbol
Not long after, in the early 17th century, the
multiplication symbol was created. This is of course
just the letter “x”.

The first use of “x” to denote multiplication was in

1618 by Scottish mathematician John Napier in his
book Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio.

He too explained the use of this new symbol in the

book by saying, “Multiplication of species [i.e.
unknowns] connects both proposed magnitudes with
the symbol ‘in’ or ×: or ordinarily without the symbol if
the magnitudes be denoted with one letter.”
Technically, in printing, the multiplication symbol isn’t actually the
letter x. It is a slightly smaller character of the same shape which
is raised up.

There can be confusion when using a regular keyboard with “x”

as a multiplication symbol and using “x” as a variable. Gottfried
Leibniz, one of the co-inventors of calculus, disliked using an “x”
for this reason.

For that reason, a dot is also sometimes used as a multiplication

symbol. This is usually more popular in Europe, and it too can be
confusing because a dot is used for a special type of vector
multiplication.
DIVISION SYMBOL
The earliest of the modern division
symbols which we use is called the
obelus. This is the straight line with a
dot above and below it.

This was first used in 1659 by Swiss

mathematician Johann Rahn.
 Myth

The preferred division symbol is called the solidus

or the forward slash. This is very similar to, and
conveys the same meaning, as the horizontal line
used in fractions. This was a much later creation
and wasn’t to represent division until 1845.

The adoption of computers only strengthened the use

of the solidus over the obelus as the obelus isn’t
on most keyboards.
Equal Sign

The equal symbol was first used in 1557 by Welsh mathematician

Robert Recorde in his book The Whetstone of Witte.

In his book, he was writing equations, and over 200 times he had to
write the phrase “is equal to”. He basically got sick of writing it over
and over, so he eventually created a symbol so he didn’t have to write
it anymore.

He said in his book, “And to avoid the tedious repetition of these

words: “is equal to” I will set as I do often in work use, a pair of
parallels, or duplicate lines of one [the same] length, thus: =, because
no 2 things can be more equal.”
Infinity Sign
The infinity symbol, that being the number 8 on its
side, is even older than the modern number 8, which
is a Hindu-Arabic number. The earliest evidence for
it goes back to the cross of St. Boniface in the 7th
or 8th century.

The first use of it to signify infinity wasn’t until

1655. English clergyman John Wallis used it in his
book De sectionibus conicis. There was no explanation
given as to why it was selected, but one hypothesis
is that it is a variant of the symbol used for the
Roman Number 1000, which was the letter C, followed
by an I, and then with a backward C.