Introduction of "Arabic" numerals in European accounting

              The Accounting Historians Journal Vol. 19, No. 2 December 1992
John W. Durham FORT HAYS STATE UNIVERSITY
THE INTRODUCTION OF "ARABIC" NUMERALS IN EUROPEAN ACCOUNTING
Abstract: The general adoption of "Arabic" numerals by European bookkeepers occurred at least five hundred years after their introduc-tion to the scholarly world. The early availability yet late adoption of this numeration is shown to be due to several factors, not least to interplay between the culture and cultural conservatism of clerks and the educational and intellectual changes of the early Italian Renais-sance.
THE MODERN VIEW OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF ROMAN NUMERALS TO MEDIEVAL ACCOUNTING1
A commonly held view of the heritage of Roman accounting in Medieval times is that of Chatfield [1974, p. 16]: "Taken as a whole, the Roman accounting legacy to the Middle Ages was tenacious but of doubtful value. The preference for Roman nu-merals continued among bookkeepers until the sixteenth cen-
1 Terminology notes:
(1) In the body of this paper the term "Arabic" is applied to the numerals whose modern descendants are written 0, 1, 2, ... in European langauges. The origins of these numerals lie beyond the present topic; suffice it to say that the origins are complex, probably ultimately involving contributions by Mesopo-tamian, Indian, Greek, and Arabian cultures. The use of the term "Arabic" should not be taken as expressing a commitment to the dominance of one part of that heritage.
(2) The modern and Medieval meanings of many words are different. Even the term "abacus" had many meanings at all times. The device was not called abacus in ancient times; in fact, in the strict sense, it had no name at all. The normal terminology in Latin was tabula (calculatoria), and the tokens used were called calculi (literally, "pebbles"). A user of the device was called calculator. In Greek, the corresponding term was τράπεζα, while the tokens were called ψήφος and the operator was called ψηφιστης. We cannot be sure of the terms in Old English, the only other language of pre-Renaissance Europe with a surviving large scholarly literature, but they were probably taefel (a loan from Latin), perhaps taefel-stan, and rimere, respectively. Recognizing this terminology, the "abacus" is mentioned occasionally (which is all we should expect) in classical literature (cf. the references given by de Ste. Croix [1956, p. 60 n. 5]; also the notes of Macve [1985, p. 262]) and in Medieval literature before the late tenth century (a convenient sampling is in Latham [1975, s.w. calculatio, calculator,