Category: oldest
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World’s oldest known decimal point discovered in merchant’s notes from 1440s Italy
(Image credit: aluxum via Getty Images) The decimal point is 150 years older than historians thought it was, newfound notes from 15th-century Italy reveal. Decimal points are so simple, it seems like they should have existed forever. These handy mathematical tools break up whole numbers into tenths, hundredths and thousandths, making computation much simpler than…