Zero is Hero, A blog by Salah Elleithy

My friend Salah launched a blog a few months ago, Zero is Hero. It can be reached at http://selleithy.blogspot.com/

Zero is a very interesting number. Mankind has been using numbers from the days of the Babylonians. However we never knew about the number zero until much later in history, sometime around 458 AD. Zero comes from arabic term "Sifr" and indicates two very different meanings. The first meaning being empty, and the second a place holder in a larger number to indicate a multiple of ten. Zero did revolutionize the numbering system and provided more meaning to a positional concept of numbers. The positional concept of numbers was introduced around 500 AD by Al-Khawarizmi.

To read more about zero check the links below, and do not forget to drop by Salah's blog

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29
[2] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexes/Arabs.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics
[4] http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980422/1998042208.html
[5] http://www.al-bab.com/arab/science.htm#Mathematics
[6] "1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World", Second Edition, Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization, p. 66, 67.