Simon Stevin, “De Thiende: The Art of Tenth”, 1585 was a nonfiction, mathematics book; and, “Disme” is the English title translation of 1608. The idea of extending the decimal place-value system to include fractions is Simon Stevin’s topic of the writing.
A “decimal separator” is a symbol used to separate the “integer” part from the “fractional” part of a number written in “decimal” form. The choice of the symbol for the “decimal separator” affects the choice of the symbol for the “thousand separator” used in digit groupings. Both a comma (,) and a period (.) are generally accepted separators for international use.
Decimal point: 0.1
Decimal comma: 0,1
Ten thousand can be written three ways:
10 000,00
10.000,00
10,000.00 this is English form.
The numeral one (1) and seven zeros (0) represent “ten thousand”, above in various accepted notation standards.
“De Thiende” was the earliest treatise deliberately devoted to the study of decimal fractions, and Stevin’s account was the earliest systematic account of them. Even if, decimal fractions were used previously by others; it is the Stevin -and no other- who introduced them into the mathematical domain. In “De Thiende” the book a new method to write decimal fractions was given; but, not by means of a “numerator” and a “denominator” but in positional system as was known already for “whole numbers”.
One thought on “Simon Stevin, “De Thiende: The Art of Tenth”, 1585.”