Mathematics Quote by Keith J. Devlin
““Underlying all this activity—in the customhouses, on the wharves, in every place of business—were numbers. Merchants measured out their wares and negotiated prices; customs officers calculated taxes to be levied on imports; scribes and stewards prepared ships’ manifests, recording the values in long columns using Roman numerals. They would have put their writing implements to one side and used either their fingers or a physical abacus to perform the additions, then picked up pen and parchment once again to enter the subtotals from each page on a final page at the end. With no record of the computation itself, if anyone questioned the answer, the entire process would have to be repeated.””
About This Quote
Source Essay: The History of Numbers, 2020
Before modern calculators, commerce relied on manual computation using fingers or abacuses, making records vulnerable to error and loss.
In simple terms: People used fingers or abacuses for calculations.
Key Takeaway
Embrace reliable tools.
Themes
technology
commerce
computation
history
Mood
analytical
historical
Type
explanatory
educational
When to use this quote
- trading
- tax assessment
- shipping
- financial auditing
Key Concepts
mathematics
record-keeping
Questions to Reflect On
- How would modern tools reshape such processes?
- What risks arise from lacking computation records?
A Different Perspective
Manual methods limited speed and accuracy.
![“Geometry, which should only obey Physics, when united with it sometimes commands it. If it happens that the question which we wish to examine is too complicated for all the elements to be able to enter into the analytical comparison we wish to make, we separate the more inconvenient [elements], we…” quote by Jean le Rond d'Alembert](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/0d9/jean-le-rond-d-alembert-26487_able_geometry-which-should-only-obey-physics_6945.jpg)
