Leif Halvard Silli, Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:01:53 +0200: > Btw, the venerable Danish Salomonsens conversional encyclopedia, the > 1924 edition, says, that subtraction, quote: "is written a – b or a ÷ > b, where the – and the ÷ is called the minus sign". [7] So it sounds as > if it saw it as shapes of the very same character. And this also makes > sense when we consider that we historically apparently never used the ÷ > for division.
The same encyclopedia on Division says: [1] ]] If the dividend or the divisor is not both of the positive, one divided their numeric values and places a + or a ÷ in front of the quotient, depending on [ ... snip ...] [[ The striking thing here is that it talks about division and recommends ÷ for signifying negative value without even discussing the use of ÷ as division signal or hint that there could be possibility for confusion. Which in turn hints that there were no danger for confusion ... [1] http://runeberg.org/salmonsen/2/6/0251.html -- Leif H Silli
