From: cym224@gmail.com (Nemo)
Subject: [TUHS] Slashes
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 10:11:53 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAJfiPzzRzFHeQLnyr16uR0fDqApc+vbFAF91j60QUJLHv-JPjQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201607091322.u69DMtSu001030@coolidge.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>
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On 9 July 2016 at 09:22, Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> If 19961 is the oldest citation the OED can come up with, "slash"
> really is a coinage of the computer age. Yet the character had
> been in algebra books for centuries. The oral tradition that underlies
> eqn would be the authority for a "solid" name. I suspect, though,
> that regardless of what the algebra books called it, the name
> would be "divided by".
Out of curiosity, I consulted Cajori [1]. All sorts of notations were
used to denote division (including reversed letters) in antiquity
although fractions were commonly denoted by numerator above a
separating line and denominator below. In 1659, Johann Heinrich Rahn
introduced the symbol ÷ (period above and below a minus sign, Unicode
00F7 -- apologies if the symbol does not display) for division, having
been previously used to indicate subtraction. In 1684, G.W. Liebniz
introduced ':' for division. Later authors used both solidus and
reverse-solidus to indicate division. (Frustratingly, Cajori never
gives a name to the symbol '/'.)
Here is the start of Para. 240 (shades of Algol vs C): "There are
perhaps no symbols which are as completely observant of political
boundaries as are ÷ [Unicode 00F7] and : as symbols for division. The
former belongs to Great Britain, the British dominions, and the United
States. The latter belongs to Continental Europe and the
Latin-American countries." In 1923, the US National Committee on
Mathematical Requirements recommended dropping ÷ (Unicode 00F7) in
favour of the symbol '/' (again nameless).
Bemer, an IBM engineer, argued that the Selectric type ball should be
designed to carry 64 characters required for ASCII, rather than the
typewriter standard 44
(http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/selectric). The
suggestion was dismissed. Knuth, in his TeXbook, refers to
"non-mathematical slashes" and entries for virgule and solidus say
"See slash".
[1] A History Of Mathematical Notations Vol I
N.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-07-10 14:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-07-09 13:22 Doug McIlroy
2016-07-09 15:59 ` John Cowan
2016-07-11 6:44 ` Peter Jeremy
2016-07-10 14:11 ` Nemo [this message]
2016-07-10 20:23 ` pete
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2016-07-10 0:52 Doug McIlroy
2016-07-10 1:51 ` John Cowan
2016-07-11 12:09 ` Tony Finch
2016-07-11 12:34 ` John Cowan
2016-07-14 14:48 ` Christian Neukirchen
2016-07-08 14:52 [TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS) Clem Cole
2016-07-09 16:47 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-07-09 17:03 ` John Cowan
2016-07-09 17:21 ` Milo Velimirovic
2016-07-10 14:38 ` [TUHS] Slashes Christian Neukirchen
2016-07-08 11:25 [TUHS] Slashes (was: MS-DOS) Norman Wilson
2016-07-10 18:26 ` [TUHS] Slashes Adam Sampson
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