TED-Ed

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-numerical-systems-alessandra-king 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... and 0. With just these ten symbols, we can write any rational number imaginable. But why these particular symbols? Why ten of them? And why do we arrange them the way we do? Alessandra King gives a brief history of numerical systems. Lesson by Alessandra King, animation by Zedem Media.