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Nicolas Chuquet (1445, but some sources say c. 1455 – 1488, some sources say c. 1500) was a French

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...

mathematician

Mathematics

Mathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....

whose great work, Triparty en la science des nombres http://www.miakinen.net/vrac/nombres#lettres_zillions http://hexadecimal.florencetime.net/chuquet/triparty.htm, was unpublished in his lifetime. Most of it, however, was copied without attribution by Estienne de La Roche

Estienne de La Roche

Estienne de La Roche was a French mathematician.Sometimes known as Estienne de Villefranche, La Roche was born in Lyon, but his family also owned property in Villefranche-sur-Saône, where he lived during his youth. He studied mathematics with Nicolas Chuquet. Having in his possession Chuquet's...

in his 1520 textbook, l'Arismetique. In the 1870s, scholar Aristide Marre discovered Chuquet's manuscript and published it in 1880. The manuscript contained notes in de la Roche's handwriting.

Chuquet was born in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, France

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...

, and died in Lyon

Lyon

||-||}Lyon , often Anglicized as Lyons, is a city in east-central France in the region Rhône-Alpes, situated between Paris and Marseille. Its name is pronounced in French and Arpitan, and or in English...

. His thinking was clearly far ahead of its time. He invented his own notation for algebraic concepts and exponentiation

Exponentiation

Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written aⁿ, involving two numbers, the base a and the exponent n...

. He may have been the first mathematician to recognize zero and negative numbers as exponents.

His book shows a huge number divided into groups of six digits, and in a short passage he states that the groups can be called

"million, the second mark byllion, the third mark tryllion, the fourth quadrillion, the fifth quyillion, the sixth sixlion, the seventh septyllion, the eighth ottyllion, the ninth nonyllion and so on with others as far as you wish to go.

Because of this, he is sometimes credited as the inventor of the modern names for large numbers. However, this is an oversimplification. The word million had been in use centuries prior to Chuquet.

In 1475, Jehan Adam

Jehan Adam

Jehan Adam was a French mathematician who flourished in the 15th century. He was secretary to Nicholle Tilhart, who was notary, secretary and auditor of accounts to King Louis XI of France....

recorded the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" (for 10¹² and 10¹⁸) and it is believed that these words or similar ones were in general use at that time. Chuquet was, however, the original author of the earliest work using of a systematic, extended series of names ending in -illion or -yllion.

The system in which the names million, billion, trillion, etc. refer to powers of one million is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet system.

Around 1550, Jacques Peletier du Mans

Jacques Peletier du Mans

Jacques Peletier du Mans was a humanist, poet and mathematician of the French Renaissance.Born at Le Mans into a bourgeois family, he studied at the Collège de Navarre where his brother Jean was a professor of mathematics and philosophy...

took a system based on powers of 10⁶, and added the term "milliard" for 10⁹. This system was then used in England and Germany and part of the rest of Europe. This system is sometimes referred to as the Chuquet-Peletier system.

Much later, in France and in the USA, a different short scale

Long and short scales

The long and short scales are two of several different large number naming systems used throughout the world: It refers to a system of large number names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term: billion means a thousand millions , trillion means a...

system became established where the term billion signifies 10⁹. Last century, England and other English-speaking countries joined the USA and other countries in using the short scale system; whereas, France rejoined Germany, most of Europe, and much of the world in the Chuquet-Peletier, or long scale

Long and short scales

The long and short scales are two of several different large number naming systems used throughout the world: It refers to a system of large number names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term: billion means a thousand millions , trillion means a...

, system.

What is undeniable is that Chuquet was the author of the earliest system (published in the works Larismetique (1520) by Estienne de la Roche without attribution and Triparty en la science des nombres (written before 1488 but only published 1870) by Nicolas Chuquet) for names of large numbers by combining Latin-derived prefixes with the suffix -illion.

Short scale comparison	Chuquet	Peletier	Systematics	Base 10	SI Prefix
unit Units of measurement A measurement unit is a scalar quantity, defined and adopted by convention, with which any other quantity of the same kind can be compared to express the ratio of the two quantities as a number....	unit Units of measurement A measurement unit is a scalar quantity, defined and adopted by convention, with which any other quantity of the same kind can be compared to express the ratio of the two quantities as a number....	unit	Million⁰	10⁰	(none)
thousand 1000 (number) width="250" border="1" style="float: right; background: #feffff; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0.5em"\| colspan=2 \| \|-\| Cardinal\| 1000 one thousand\|-\| Ordinal\| 1000th one thousandth\|-\| Factorization\| \|-\| Divisors...	thousand	thousand	Million^0.5	10³	k (kilo)
Million Million One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The name is derived from Italian, where mille was 1,000, and 1,000,000 became milione, "a large thousand"....	Million Million One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The name is derived from Italian, where mille was 1,000, and 1,000,000 became milione, "a large thousand"....	Million	Million¹	10⁶	M (mega)
Billion	thousand million	Milliard	Million^1.5	10⁹	G (giga)
Trillion Trillion -Numbers:Either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000 - for all short scale countries - increasingly common meaning in English language usage....	Billion	Billion	Million²	10¹²	T (tera)
Quadrillion Quadrillion Quadrillion may mean either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000,000 - for all short scale countries - increasingly common meaning in English language usage* 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - for all long scale countries...	thousand billion	Billiard	Million^2.5	10¹⁵	P (peta)
Quintillion	Trillion Trillion -Numbers:Either of the two numbers :* 1,000,000,000,000 - for all short scale countries - increasingly common meaning in English language usage....	Trillion	Million³	10¹⁸	E (exa)
Sextillion	thousand trillion	Trilliard	Million^3.5	10²¹	Z (zetta)
Septillion	Quadrillion	Quadrillion	Million⁴	10²⁴	Y (yotta)

Nicolas Chuquet

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