I recall 0 had a fear around it, in the same way as negative numbers and complex numbers. People didn’t consider it real and refused to use it.
Zero as a placeholder for arabic numbers was used long before people became comfortable with “a number without digits”; zero was just a placeholder, not a digit.
I tried finding when zero as a number became used, but found that really hard since everyone instead talks about the digit/placeholder.
Best I found is number.wiki which states India started using it as a number around 600. The introduction and popularization in europe around 12-1600 had it introduced as purely a placeholder though. “The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 … any number may be written”
I recall 0 had a fear around it, in the same way as negative numbers and complex numbers. People didn’t consider it real and refused to use it.
Zero as a placeholder for arabic numbers was used long before people became comfortable with “a number without digits”; zero was just a placeholder, not a digit.
I tried finding when zero as a number became used, but found that really hard since everyone instead talks about the digit/placeholder.
Best I found is number.wiki which states India started using it as a number around 600. The introduction and popularization in europe around 12-1600 had it introduced as purely a placeholder though. “The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 … any number may be written”