Babylonian Number System

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The base of the new system. (Neugebauer, 1927) 4. Angels online forums. The number 60 is the product of the number of planets (5 known at the time) by the number of months in the year, 12. Boorstin, 6Recall, the very early use of the sexagesimal system in China. There may well be a connection. The Babylonian system is credited as being the first known positional numeral system, in which the value of a particular digit depends both on the digit itself.

Assorted References

• major ref.
  • In numerals and numeral systems: Positional numeral systems

    The decimal number system is an example of a positional system, in which, after the base b has been adopted, the digits 1, 2, …, b − 1 are given special names, and all larger numbers are written as sequences of these…

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• number systems
  • In numeral system

    …the symbol depends upon the position or place of the symbol in the representation; for example, the 2 in 20 and 200 represents two tens and two hundreds, respectively. Racing in car game download. Most ancient systems, such as the Egyptian, Roman, Hebrew, and Greek numeral systems, did not have a positional characteristic, and this…

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historical development

• Archimedes
  • In Archimedes: His works

    …effect, is to create a place-value system of notation, with a base of 100,000,000. (That was apparently a completely original idea, since he had no knowledge of the contemporary Babylonian place-value system with base 60.) The work is also of interest because it gives the most detailed surviving description of…

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• China
  • In East Asian mathematics: The method of the celestial unknown

    …also arranged according to a positional notation. Thus, x² − 3x + 5 + 7/x² is represented as

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• India
  • In India: Society and culture

    …of the cipher and the decimal system is confirmed by inscriptions. With advances in mathematics there was comparable progress in astronomy. Aryabhata, writing in 499, calculated π (pi) to 3.1416 and the solar year to 365.3586… days and stated that the Earth was spherical and rotated on its axis. That…

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• Mayan civilization
  • In pre-Columbian civilizations: The Maya calendar and writing system

    …mathematics included two outstanding developments: positional numeration and a zero. These may rightly be deemed among the most brilliant achievements of the human mind. The same may also be said of ancient Maya astronomy. The duration of the solar year had been calculated with amazing accuracy, as well as the…

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Assorted References

• development in Mesopotamia
  • In mathematics: The numeral system and arithmetic operations

    …the base of 60 (sexagesimal). The reasons for the choice of 60 are obscure, but one good mathematical reason might have been the existence of so many divisors (2, 3, 4, and 5, and some multiples) of the base, which would have greatly facilitated the operation of division. For…

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  • In history of Mesopotamia: The achievements of ancient Mesopotamia

    …to the Babylonians—for instance, the sexagesimal system for the calculation of time and angles, which is still practical because of the multiple divisibility of the number 60; the Greek day of 12 “double-hours”; and the zodiac and its signs. In many cases, however, the origins and routes of borrowings are…

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history of

• Greek mathematics
  • In mathematics: Greek trigonometry and mensuration

    …the Greeks adopted the Mesopotamian sexagesimal method in arithmetic, whence it survives in the standard units for angles and time employed to this day.

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• Islamic mathematics
  • In mathematics: Mathematics in the 10th century

    …second common system was the base-60 numeration inherited from the Babylonians via the Greeks and known as the arithmetic of the astronomers. Although astronomers used this system for their tables, they usually converted numbers to the decimal system for complicated calculations and then converted the answer back to sexagesimals.

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• science
  • In history of science: The Middle East

    …of weights and coinage, was based on 60 (it was in ancient Mesopotamia that the system of degrees, minutes, and seconds developed) and was adapted to a practical arithmetic. The heavens were the abode of the gods, and because heavenly phenomena were thought to presage terrestrial disasters, they were carefully…

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