Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/114

OF LONG AGO Do you think that this is about the most impractical thing you ever heard of? If you do, just remember that you use these fractions whenever you speak of the time of day. If it is 2 hr. 25 min. 47 sec. past noon, it is really 2 hr.+ 25/60 hr. + 47/3600 hr. past noon. In other words, you are using the awkward fractions found in the writings of all who needed to use arithmetic for very accurate computation in the time of Heron of Alexandria, one of the great writers of Egypt at the beginning of the Christian era.

There have been many other ways of writing fractions, and I will tell you of one used by a boy named Jakob who lived in Germany about four hundred years ago.

Jakob went to school to an arithmetic teacher and tried his best to learn the new Arab way of writing fractions. The Arabs seemed to have learned these fractions from the Hindus. So Jakob learned how to write ¾ and ⅞ and thought he knew a great deal about fractions.

Jakob’s teacher did not think very highly of what he called “the new-fangled numerals,” meaning the common ones that we use. He 87