Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/104

OF LONG AGO teacher did, and so he decided that some day, when he grew up, he would write an arithmetic of his own and make the work in division still more simple.

When Filippo became a man he did what he had planned ; he wrote an arithmetic containing our plan of dividing, and this was published in Florence just a year before Columbus discovered America.

In the time of Filippo Calandri, about the year 1500, Italy was much in advance of other European countries, and so we may expect that Filippo’s improvement in division was not at once adopted outside of his country.

{{Box| 3 150 {25 66 }} HOW ADRIAEN DIVIDED The division of 150 by 6, from a work by Adriaen van Roomen, printed about three hundred years ago

This is the reason why a boy named Adriaen van Roomen (văn rō'mĕn), who lived in Holland one or two hundred years later, was still dividing by the old method. 79