 The concept of a positional number system was brought to Europe by the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi (ca. 780–ca. 850 CE). His main work on numbers (ca. 820 CE) was translated into Latin as Liber Algebrae et Almucabola in the twelfth century, which gave us amongst other things the term “algebra”. Our word “algorithm” is derived from Algoritmi, the Latin form of his name. Positional number systems simplified commercial and scientific calculations.