The Hindu-Arabic Numerals c11.119

c11.119

The period from the time of Gerbert until after the appearance of Leonardo's monumental work may be called the period of the abacists. Even for many years after the appearance early in the twelfth century of the books explaining the Hindu art of reckoning, there was strife between the abacists, the advocates of the abacus, and the algorists, those who favored the new numerals. The words *cifra* and *algorismus cifra* were used with a somewhat derisive significance, indicative of absolute uselessness, as indeed the zero is useless on an abacus in which the value of any unit is given by the column which it occupies.² So Gautier de Coincy (1177–1236) in a work on the miracles of Mary says: