NUMBER STORIES
“There were n't any schools,” said Charles.
“So much the better,” remarked the Tease.
“As I have told you, those who did not go to school had to work all day, and how would you like that?” asked the Story-Teller.
The Crowd agreed that, after all, schools and multiplication and arithmetic were easier than digging and planting all day long, and so the Story-Teller continued:
“When Caius and Titus multiplied they did not use the Roman numerals; they used calculi, or counters, as they did when they added numbers. This story is too long, however, so I shall only tell you about the way in which the world learned to multiply as we do. Listen then to the story of Cuthbert (kŭth'bếrt) and Leonardo and Johann (yōhän').”
When Leonardo of Pisa went to school to the Moorish teacher on the northern coast of
Africa, over seven hundred years ago, and learned how to write the numerals which we
now use, the first great advantage that he found was in multiplying. Some of his boy
friends in Pisa were probably using counters, or calculi, for this purpose, but his old Moorish
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