La Thiende

…Stevin published a small pamphlet, La Thiende (“The Tenth”), in which he presented an elementary and thorough account of decimal fractions and their daily use. Although he did not invent decimal fractions and his notation was rather unwieldy, he established their use in day-to-day mathematics. He declared that the universal…

…and prominent among them was De Thiende (Disme: The Art of Tenths), an influential booklet published in 1585 by the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin. De Thiende was intended as a practical manual aimed at teaching the essentials of operating with decimal fractions, but it also contained many conceptual innovations. It…