Evolution of The Glyph
The glyph used in the modern Western world to represent the number 2 traces its roots back to the Brahmin Indians, who wrote "2" as two horizontal lines. The modern Chinese and Japanese languages still use this method. The Gupta rotated the two lines 45 degrees, making them diagonal, and sometimes also made the top line shorter and made its bottom end curve towards the center of the bottom line. Apparently for speed, the Nagari started making the top line more like a curve and connecting to the bottom line. The Ghubar Arabs made the bottom line completely vertical, and now the glyph looks like a dotless closing question mark. Restoring the bottom line to its original horizontal position, but keeping the top line as a curve that connects to the bottom line leads to our modern glyph.
In fonts with text figures, 2 usually is of x-height, for example, .
Read more about this topic: 2 (number)
Famous quotes containing the words evolution of the, evolution of and/or evolution:
“The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars, it is also defined by the evolution of the human mind and the development of the human consciousness.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“Analyze theory-building how we will, we all must start in the middle. Our conceptual firsts are middle-sized, middle-distanced objects, and our introduction to them and to everything comes midway in the cultural evolution of the race.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.”
—Owen Barfield (b. 1898)