De Thiende 2026-10-13
Simon Stevin's De Thiende, published in 1585, presents calculation with decimal fractions for practical users. Its notation explicitly labels units, tenths, hundredths, and smaller decimal places; it does not use our modern decimal point. This is a historical example of changing representation to make the same arithmetic operations easier to organize. [ref] [ref]
Simon Stevin Created 2026-10-13 Updated 2026-10-24
Figure 1.
Portrait of Simon Stevin
. Anonymous seventeenth-century Dutch painter/engraver; Leiden University Library, Icones Leidenses 40. Public domain (life-plus-100) and faithful reproduction / PD-Art; Public Domain Mark. Source and usage information on the linked Wikimedia file page. Source.