OT: Something odd about that queue?

[charles]

My paternal grandfather, who I never knew, designed bridges for theBombay Railway Company. I believe they are still in use.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, charles [e-mail]> writes

My maternal grandfather was in India around 1900 helping install a steel rolling mill and training the operators. He came from Darlington so I guess this was a normal commercial operation.

>

[Cursitor Doom]

Ha! Big deal. Not exactly comparable to say the development of Calculus and imaginary numbers is it.

[Pomegranate Bastard]

As a foreigner I hope you're not including yourself in the term "us".

[Pomegranate Bastard]

A foreigner like you should not include yourself in the term "us".

[Custos Custodum]

And where do you think they got their ideas from? Indian mathematics was flourishing at least a couple of centuries before Mohammed arrived on the scene, and it would be a further half a millennium before Islam's "golden age".

[Cursitor Doom]

You do go on. I'm not a foreigner. I am of the soil of England and wherever I may dwell in the world, I remain an Englishman - and justifiably f****ng proud of it! :P

[SteveW]

How do you do the former or use the latter without 0?

[Joe]

Note that Arabs (in general) use numbers which are clearly related to our 'Arabic' numerals but look more primitive. They call them 'Indian numbers'.

These are somewhat archaic and not the versions to be found on Middle Eastern number plates:

The centre row here are on ME number plates. The graphic inexplicably misses 0, which is represented by a small dot, diamond shaped in cursive script: ?quality=90&webp=true&resize=620,414

[Joe]

And on the whole, 'Arab' civilisation was Persian. Mohammed and his lads were originally nomads. who are famous for not inventing things.

[zall]

Yeah, that magnificent solution to the surplus mother in law problem is FAR more important. She goes on the funeral pyre whether she wants to or not.

[zall]

China didn't. and still hasn't.

[Paul]

Lots of groups stand ready to take credit.

"About 773 AD the mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi was the first to work on equations that were equal to zero (now known as algebra), though he called it ‘sifr’. By the ninth century the zero was part of the Arabic numeral system in a similar shape to the present day oval we now use."

What I was taught, was that the Arabs got the credit.

Paul

[Pomegranate Bastard]

A foreigner to the UK is someone who doesn't live here and pays no taxes here.

How can anyone except an imbecile be proud of something they had nothing to do with?

[Max Demian]

According to Today, for George VI they were all white and all wore their Sunday Best. And hats. Bring back hats.

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Have you not visited Bradford or Leicester recently, they still do.

[billy bookcase]

Unlike a roll of black duct tape

Inside first with the adhesive facing outwards, Then the outside on top

bb

[Dave Plowman (News]

Have you read the thread you're replying to?

[Harry Bloomfield Esq]

Some were busy fighting in the streets.

[Gopalan Sampath]

She stole the Kohinoor the greatest diamond on earth from a boy Indian king. Indians are picked; no wonder you don' find the colored in your kneeling wheeling mob!