For me, the symbol ÷ also only ever appeared on calculators. I don't
think it appeared ever in primary or secondary school textbooks I've
worked with and wasn't used for handwritten arithmetic at my schools
either.
During my time and in Germany, I meant to say. As I meant to temporally
bound Martin's positive statement about a geographical spread (Germany).
FWIW, I only really ever saw ÷ on calculators too. When I was taught
division in grade school the symbol we used was U+27CC LONG DIVISION ⟌
This symbol is unknown in Germany. Actually, it's more like a notation
since the horizontal is variable-length. I've found that long division
notation varies quite a bit across cultures. (We in Germany would just
write "233 : 7 =" and produce the calculation details as a diagonal tail
starting and aligned below "23" and write out the final result after the
"=". If you wanted to know.)
Stephan
