Babylonians — oh yes! it’s the Iraqis again — developed a zero about 300 B.C. It was represented by two slanted wedges on their clay tablets and served as a place holder in the sexagesimal (base 60 unlike our current base 10) system they used. By the way, there is something to be said for base 60 because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 5, so one can get halves, thirds, etc. without going to a second or more decimal places. Our base 10 system forces us into two decimal places for a quarter and an infinite number for a third, wasting computer time and leading to inaccuracies because of approximations that have to be fudged for such mundane computations as calculating interest in savings accounts.
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