# Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/114

The mathematical sciences were then cultivated with most success in Italy; and when Francis I, of France, sent across the Alps for architects, painters, and sculptors to construct and adorn the magnificent châteaux of Chambord and Chenonceaux, he was thus also able to ask for his colleges algebraists who were certainly the first mathematicians in Europe. Algebra was not then what it has since become, a science employing only letters, signs, and symbols, having a well-defined significance and serving as the characters of a very clear and very precise language, which the initiated could understand as well as they could their mother tongue. The unknown quantity was then called "the thing" (res, coser; from which algebra was for some time named the art of the thing), and it was often represented by R. The square of the unknown quantity was called census (2). The signs ${\displaystyle \times }$ and ${\displaystyle =}$ were not known, but the initials of the words for which they stand