History Of Zero (0) – Who and When Invented the Zero?

In old times Greeks use to think that how zero can have any value because as per their understanding zero is nothing through which they cannot define or represent nothing. The Sumerians were the first to develop a counting system to keep an account of their stock of goods like horses and cattle easily and efficiently. Their counting system was known as the sexagesimal numeral system. Around 2500 BC, the Sumerian System was passed down to the Akkadians, who then passed it down to the Babylonians in 2000 BC.

History of Zero (0):

The number zero is said to have originated or been created in these three locations.

1. The Mayan Civilization
2. Ancient Babylon
3. Ancient India

In each of these civilizations, zeros were created at various times. Now let’s discuss each of them.

The Mayan Civilization

The Mayan Civilization from 2000 B.C. to 900 A.D. in what is now Mexico, used the concept of zero as a placeholder that is 505 is a way bigger number than 55 like using a comma in written language. In the seventh century B.C., the Babylonians used it similarly.

Ancient Babylon

The Sumerians, the first people in the world to develop a counting system, taught the Babylonians their number system. In the third century B.C., they invented the number zero. The place value system was invented by the Babylonians. The Babylonians placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone nor was it used at the end of a number. However, they never developed the idea of zero as a number.

Ancient India

The first-time concept of zero was a number and not merely a symbol for separation was attributed to India by great Indian Mathematician Aryabhatta in the 5th century A.D. He gave the world the digit zero for which he became immortal. Then BrahmaGupta around 650 A.D another Indian Mathematician was the first to formalize arithmetic operations using zero. To indicate zero, he used dots beneath numbers. For the first time define rules for zero and referred to it as ‘SUNIYA’ meaning ‘EMPTY’. Brahmagupta wrote standard rules for reaching zero through addition and subtraction as well as the results of operations with zero.

The Equations are

1+0=1
1-0=1

The only mistake in his rules was dividing by zero. He thought that one divided by zero is equal to zero which was later proved to be false and corrected after centuries that a number divided by zero is actually undefined. From India zero made its way to china and then back to the middle east in the late 8th century.

Where a Muslim mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarrizimi was the first to work on equations that would equal zero or algebra as it come to be known in the 9th century by 879 A.D. He had written zero as oval from a dot. But in this case smaller than the other numbers. Mohammed ibn- Musa al-Khowarizimi called the zero, ‘SIFR’ which means ’empty’. Following the Moorish conquest of Spain. Zero finally reached Europe middle of the 12th-century translations of Musa al-Khowarrizimi weaved their way to Europe but it still took a few more centuries before the concept of zero fully spread in Europe because in start religious leaders in Europe opposes zero because they believed god is everything and nothingness represents a devil which is a zero.

In 1202 A.D. an Italian mathematician Fibonacci built on Al Calrisme’s works Fibonacci developments quickly gained notice by Italian Merchants and german bankers to use zero accountants knew their books were balanced when the positive and negative amounts of their assets and liabilities were equal to zero. The next great Europe Mathematician to promote the use of zero was Frenchman Renee Descartes the founder of the cartesian coordinate system who used zero, zero(0,0) as the graph coordinates for x and y axes in the middle of the 16th century. Although zero was now becoming more commonly used by people. The developers of calculus Lebanese and Newton would make the final step in understanding zero. Over the century zero had different names. They are

Country	Name
India	SUNYA
Middle East	SIFR
French	ZEFERO
Italy	ZERO
English	ZERO

So, that was the history of zero over the centuries.