Infinity symbol – flag spectrum

In mathematics, the figure eight symbolizes infinity. As with many icons, it took some time to catch on. It was first used by the English mathematician John Wallis in 1655 in a book explaining how geometric figures could consist of an infinite number of lines or parallelograms. Wallis gives the thickness of these pieces as »¹⁄_∞V. He does not say how he came up with the exact symbol. It is believed to have been derived from a variety of Roman numerals where 1000 is written as “CIƆ”, which when contracted resembles a false eight. Other authors have used an “m” instead (could The number 1000 is also represented by the letter “m” in the Roman numeral system).

Could there be a symbol of the immeasurable?

When calculus was developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was still debate about whether it was permissible to represent infinity in a mathematical symbol. It was only later that the corresponding figures mathematically regulating the manipulation of infinity were developed – and the symbol appeared more and more often in texts. Apparently, at the beginning of the 19th century, not all printers were able to represent the figure-eight correctly, which is why Pangma had to help himself with the “0-0” representation in his book.

The figure eight as a symbol of infinity has spread beyond mathematics and is now used as a symbol (for example to designate cameras’ options), as a corporate brand, as a symbol of popular culture, in art and in many other places that don’t have any. To do something related to mathematics. There, of course, the symbol is used in a stricter sense: not as a designation for an infinitely large number, but for something corresponding to “possible infinity”. For example, the sum of the natural numbers is infinite, and this “absolute infinity” is represented by the original numbers developed by Cantor. On the other hand, if you want to show that a sequence of numbers has no end, you use the figure eight to represent this possible infinity.