information:extraction, linguistic:voice_change
History of decimal fractions

Starting from the 2nd century BCE, some Chinese units for length were based on divisions into ten; by the 3rd century CE these metrological units were used to express decimal fractions of lengths, non-positionally. Calculations with decimal fractions of lengths were performed using positional counting rods, as described in the 3rd–5th century CE Sunzi Suanjing. The 5th century CE mathematician Zu Chongzhi calculated a 7-digit approximation of π. Qin Jiushao 's book Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections (1247) explicitly writes a decimal fraction representing a number rather than a measurement, using counting rods. The number 0.96644 is denoted

Historians of Chinese science have speculated that the idea of decimal fractions may have been transmitted from China to the Middle East.

Al-Khwarizmi introduced fractions to Islamic countries in the early 9th century CE, written with a numerator above and denominator below, without a horizontal bar. This form of fraction remained in use for centuries.

Positional decimal fractions appear for the first time in a book by the Arab mathematician Abu'l-Hasan al-Uqlidisi written in the 10th century. The Jewish mathematician Immanuel Bonfils used decimal fractions around 1350 but did not develop any notation to represent them. The Persian mathematician Jamshid al-Kashi used, and claimed to have discovered, decimal fractions in the 15th century.

A forerunner of modern European decimal notation was introduced by Simon Stevin in the 16th century. Stevin's influential booklet De Thiende ("the art of tenths") was first published in Dutch in 1585 and translated into French as La Disme.

John Napier introduced using the period (.) to separate the integer part of a decimal number from the fractional part in his book on constructing tables of logarithms, published posthumously in 1620.