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It was necessary to have a symbol for "nothing", as it aided in the manipulation of numbers.

Without the zero, you have to keep inventing new symbols for larger and larger numbers.

For instance, consider the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

As it stands now, we use the number zero to help show the number ten. We write 10, where as 0 is in the units column, and 1 is in the tens column. Now that symbol "1" doesn't mean "1" any more, pairing it with that zero makes it represent an additional concept.

In 10, the zero is showing that there are zero units. And the 1 showing that there is one ten.

What if we had no zero? We'd need a new symbol to mean ten. What then of 11? And 12? If there is no zero, there is no place holding, so you couldn't have 11 mean eleven, it would instead, as in Roman Numerals, mean 2.

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15y ago

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