The story of our numbers, of the world's attempts to count, of the many experiments in writing numerals, and of the difficulties encountered through the ages in performing our everyday computations—all this is so interwoven with the history of humanity as to have an interest for every thinking person. As the world has grown, so the work with numbers has grown; when the world has faced the mysteries of the universe, numbers have assisted in solving its problems; when commerce and science have shown new needs in computation, arithmetic has always been ready to lend a hand. The history of mathematics is no small part of the history of civilization.

This being the case, it seems proper to relate at least some portion of the story of numbers to the pupils in our schools...

This book is intended for supplementary reading in the elementary school. It is written in nontechnical language, and the effort has been made to connect with the history enough of the human element to make it more interesting than any mere recital of facts. With it there is also joined something of the history of writing materials, this being connected naturally with the story of our numbers. Chapters I-VIII can easily be read aloud, and the Question Box at the end of each chapter can be used as a basis for conversation or for written work.

Excerpted from the Preface for the Grown-Ups