Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/237

Rh of arithmetic. Finger reckoning and a number game called Rithmomachia are other related subjects which received elaborate treatment. The first modern encyclopedia to appear in print is the "Epitome of all Philosophy" by the Carthusian monk Gregorius Reisch, the publication appearing in Strassburg in 1503. "Pythagoras" and "Boethius" adorn the first page of the part devoted to arithmetic.

It would appear that scientists have, in the course of centuries, grown more modest in their published claims. Borghi's "Noble work of arithmetic treating all those things which are requisite for merchants" sounds like a boast. More seductive are "The Ground of Artes," "The Castle of Knowledge," "The Pathway of Knowledge" and "The Whetstone of Witte," mathematical works by Robert Recorde, the royal physician to Edward VI. and Queen Mary. Recorde was the first to use the present equality sign, stating that no two things can be more equal than two such lines. His were the most influential English mathematical publications of the sixteenth century. Equally enticing as the titles of Recorde was Humphrey Baker's "The Well spring of Sciences, Which teacheth the perfect work and practise of Arithmetick, both in whole Numbers and Fractions" (London, 1562).

The most fitting name with which to terminate a discussion of the printed arithmetics of the sixteenth century is that of Adam Riese. So-widely were his books used and so deep the impression which they made that even to-day, nearly four centuries after he wrote, the expression to reckon "nach Adam Riese" is common in Germany. Riese's works quite supplanted the numerous editions of the Rechenbuch by the versatile Jakob Köbel, who was Reichenmeister, printer, engraver, woodcarver, public official, as well as a successful text-book writer. Köbel's "Rechenbuch" of 1514 bears silent but eloquent testimony to the tremendous inertia that must be overcome by any new system that revolutionizes the common processes of thought. Köbel's arithmetic, four hundred years after the Hindu-Arabic numerals had been explained in Europe, is wholly in Roman numerals, even to the fractions. Riese's work made the publication of any other arithmetic in Roman numerals impossible.

Part II. of the "Rara Arithmetica" treats of the rich collection of mathematical manuscripts in the Plimpton library. The oldest of these is a beautifully written Latin Euclid (about A.D. 1260). This manuscript appears to be the copy given by the translator Campanus to Jacques Pantaleon when he was Patriarch of Jerusalem. Campanus was chaplain to Pantaleon both in Jerusalem and later when that churchman became Pope Urban IV.

An arithmetic written about 1339 by Paolo Dagomari, also known as Paul of the Abacus, furnishes the clue to the derivation of our per cent, symbol. The sign is derived from the abbreviation c° for cento