Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/61

NUMBER STORIES ones the Arabs used, and so he wrote a book about them. This book was taken to Europe by some traveler and assisted in making known in that part of the world the numerals that we use. Because the numerals came to Europe from Arabia they were called Arabic numerals, but they were not used by the Arabs then nor have they been generally used by them since that time.

Number Stories, p40-illustration.png OLD EUROPEAN NUMERALS Oldest example of our numerals known in any European manuscript. This manuscript was written in Spain in 976 A.D. In France nearly a thousand years ago there lived a boy named Gerbert (zhĕr bâr'). He was so promising as a student that the priests whose school he attended sent him to Spain with a nobleman whom they knew, so that he might learn still more from travel. There he probably met with Arabs who knew about the Hindu numerals, because part of Spain was then under Arab rule, and when 40