Ramble, Part 14: Even Stevin

Simon Stevin was a very talented man. Unfortunately, he gets rather lost in the crowd of such people who swarm through the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries; but he deserves to be remembered.

Military history buffs may know him as Maurice of Nassau's quartermaster general; he also devised the system of sluices by means of which the Dutch, in times of dire need, were able to breach the dikes, bringing in the North Sea as a weapon against invading armies (and, not incidentally, allowing the powerful Dutch navy to take a hand). He was a skilled engineer; he designed and built a functioning sail-cart - a wind-propelled land vehicle. But, to the mathematician, he is most noteworthy for another achievement. He did not invent, but he popularized, the decimal point.

( Making a Point )

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