the.com/counting
the original technology, invented before writing, the wheel, and your patience for it
means The act of determining how many things there are by naming numbers in sequence, one after another.
from From the verb 'count,' which arrived in English from Old French 'conter' (to add up, to tell), itself from Latin 'computare' — to reckon together, from 'com-' (together) plus 'putare' (to reckon, to prune, to settle accounts). That same Latin root quietly gave us 'compute' through a more learned doorway, so counting and computing are long-lost siblings — one homely, one technical, both about reckoning. The 'tell' sense lingers in old phrases like a bank teller and 'counting your blessings,' a reminder that to count once meant simply to recount.
- first symbols
- Ancient tally bones predate written language by millennia
- toddler logic
- Kids grasp quantity before they can say the words
- crow math
- Crows can count to roughly four, untrained
- zero's debut
- Counting existed thousands of years before zero did
- base bias
- Ten won only because humans have ten fingers
sesame street — children's educational tv show that taught counting with the number song and big bird since 1969
count von count — sesame street character obsessed with counting everything, debuted 1972