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In 628 CE , an Indian mathematician named Brahmagupta wrote something new . Before him , people used a dot or a space to mark an empty column . That dot was not a number . It was just a placeholder . Brahmagupta changed that . He said zero is a number . He wrote that any number plus zero stays the same . He wrote that any number minus itself equals zero . He wrote that any number times zero equals zero . These were the first rules of their kind anywhere in the world . Without zero as a real number , big sums are very hard . You can not build a computer . Every modern computer runs on ones and zeros . The rules Brahmagupta wrote in India travelled west . Arab scholars carried them to Europe . By the 13th century , European merchants were using them too . The old Roman numerals had no zero . They made big calculations very hard . Today we use zero every second . It sits in every number on every screen . Brahmagupta gave nothing a name .
