Leif Halvard Silli, Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:01:53 +0200:
> Btw, the venerable Danish Salomonsens conversional encyclopedia, the
> 1924 edition, says, that subtraction, quote: "is written a – b or a ÷
> b, where the – and the ÷ is called the minus sign". [7] So it sounds as
> if it saw it as shapes of the very same character. And this also makes
> sense when we consider that we historically apparently never used the ÷
> for division.
The same encyclopedia on Division says: [1]
]] If the dividend or the divisor is not both of the positive, one
divided their numeric values and places a + or a ÷ in front of the
quotient, depending on [ ... snip ...] [[
The striking thing here is that it talks about division and recommends
÷ for signifying negative value without even discussing the use of ÷ as
division signal or hint that there could be possibility for confusion.
Which in turn hints that there were no danger for confusion ...
[1] http://runeberg.org/salmonsen/2/6/0251.html
-- Leif H SilliReceived on Wed Jul 11 2012 - 07:01:34 CDT
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