Image: Gregor Reisch, Margarita philosophica (Freiburg, 1503), Library of Congress · Public domain
A Knaph story
The Story of Number
How people kept inventing the numbers they first called impossible
c. 1800 BCE – 1891
From a square root of two scratched in clay to the complex plane: how counting grew into zero, debts, fractions, irrational lengths and imaginary numbers, and why each was doubted first.
A Knaph story
The Story of Number
How people kept inventing the numbers they first called impossible
c. 1800 BCE – 1891
From a square root of two scratched in clay to the complex plane: how counting grew into zero, debts, fractions, irrational lengths and imaginary numbers, and why each was doubted first.