The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c11.100

c11.100

So little did Gerbert appreciate these numerals that in his works known as the *Regula de abaco computi* and the *Libellus* he makes no use of them at all, employing only the Roman forms.¹ Nevertheless Bernelinus² refers to the nine ġobār characters.³ These Gerbert had marked on a thousand *jetons* or counters,⁴ using the latter on an abacus which he had a sign-maker prepare for him.⁵ Instead of putting eight counters in say the tens' column, Gerbert would put a single counter marked 8, and so for the other places, leaving the column empty where we would place a zero, but where he, lacking the zero, had no counter to place. These counters he possibly called *caracteres*, a name which adhered also to the figures themselves. It is an interesting speculation to consider whether these *apices*, as they are called in the Boethius interpolations, were in any way suggested by those Roman jetons generally known in numismatics as *tesserae*, and bearing the figures I–XVI, the sixteen referring to the number of *assi* in a *sestertius*.⁶ The name *apices* adhered to the Hindu-Arabic numerals until the sixteenth century.¹