Digit Zero

The Arabic digit zero is one of the numerals that is widely spread around the world. This positional system for writing numbers originated in India in the 5th century or earlier. It was around this time when the concept of zero was adopted and the digit 0 was created. The Arabs borrowed it from the Indians. Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book called “On the Indian Calculation,” which helped to spread the use of Arabic numerals. Later this counting system came to Europe through Spain. Pope Sylvester II advocated for the replacement of Roman numerals with Arabic ones in the 10th century. In the 12th century, Al-Khwarizmi's book “On the Indian Calculation” was translated into Latin, which played an important role in the adoption of Arabic numerals.

The symbol “Digit Zero” is included in the “ASCII digits” subblock of the “Basic Latin” block and was approved as part of Unicode version 1.1 in 1993.