Despite what you may thing, Zero has not always existed. This Website considers the history leading up to its discovery/ invention and looks at the significance it has had, both positively and negatively, on the world.
Before moving on, count to ten in your head. Where was the number zero? Why didn't you start with zero? I can see why it makes sense to start with 1 when you are counting something say, sheep on the side of the road. Before there were any sheep, you really just didn't have any reason to start counting and could just say, "hey, there isn't any sheep out there"; once there was one sheep, you simply start counting with the number one. However, I asked you to just count to the number 10, there was no reference to sheep, or any object to count. If you think of the number 1 as representing a distance away from Zero, doesn't it make sense to start by giving that reference point, the smallest distance away from zero, namely zero? I'm sure you are thinking something like, "sure, that makes sense, it's really just by convention that we start by 1, I could have just as easily started with zero."
"Easily" is definitely a relative term. It has not always been so easy to consider zero as a number. In fact, the world has resisted it, struggled with it, and fought against it; actually, quite literally. I'd have to imagine that to most people, this idea is quite out of the scope of view; which makes sense. You would have to look back a long time, and look at the overall picture of time, from before zero to now, to really understand it. Well, that is what I will be trying to do; to bring this idea into your scope of view.
So what is zero? Zero can represent the idea of nothing. In school you probably heard this a lot, "We have zero tolerance for bullying." Or, you might have heard this before, "Mom, we have no food, I'm hungry." Both of these exemplify zero being the idea of nothing. Noticing the term "zero" wasn't used in the second example, you would have to see that the word "zero" hasn't always existed, and that there were many descriptions, other words, and even feelings for it. Now compare the" idea of zero," to the "number zero." I'd hardly believe that for the trig function sine, that sine of(nothing) really means anything. Do you think that 15 times nothing would make sense either? To emphasize this, think back to a time before algebra, when there were just counting numbers (1, 2, 3, 4...). Tentatively think of zero as a number. Zero really seems more of an ordinal number than an actual number anyways. Wouldn't you just think of zero as being less than one?
What else could zero be? I'd guess you would have to say that zero, or better yet "0," is a symbol. Using it, I could communicate to you the number zero, or the idea of zero. Also, consider zero as a place holder. Look at the numbers 10, 100, or 5000. Zero, is acting as a place holder. It is simply saying there are not any ones, tens, or any hundreds. So really zero is being used as part of another number to describe or symbolize it. 10, is really just one number, besides as a place holder, zero has nothing to do with that number. This may seem like an obvious idea to you, but history has shown how hard it was to connect zero, to being a place holder.
In summary: zero hasn't always existed, the world has struggled and fought against accepting it, and zero has developed through time to be an idea, a place holder, a symbol, and a number. Now that I've explained what zero is, we can now look at the actual history behind it, and go into the mathematics of it. Also, we will look and see what we have achieved because of zero.
Below is a timeline that overviews the events that are considered throughout this website. Click on any box in the time line to link to a particular event, or navigate through the navigation bar at the top of the screen.
I recommend Navigating through the Menu, moving throughthe pages 1 at a time.