Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/79

NUMBER STORIES About four hundred years ago there was born in England a boy named Robert Record (rĕk'ŏrd). When he went to school he was taught to use the Roman numerals, and he added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided numbers very much as Caius had learned to do when he computed with the aid of calculi about fifteen hundred years earlier.

Number Stories, p56-illustration.png PLAN OF A COMPUTING TABLE This plan shows the arrangement of lines on the kind of computing table used in most parts of Europe in the Middle Ages. It was still extensively used when Columbus made his voyages to America

Two important changes, however, had been made in that length of time. Instead of having places on the computing table for only units, tens, hundreds, and so on, the spaces between the lines were used for fives, fifties, five 56