"It seems strange that such a labor-saving device should have struggled for nearly a thousand years after its system of place value was perfected before it replaced such crude notations as the one that the Roman conqueror made substantially universal in Europe."
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The Hindu-Arabic Numerals
The Hindu-Arabic Numerals by David Eugene Smith and was published in 1911 to, as mentioned in the preface of the book, "bring together the fragmentary narrations and to set forth the general problem of the origin and development of these numerals."
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