The collections
The Museum Plantin-Moretus conserves a multiple collections. Old printed books and manuscripts, printing presses and tools, paintings, prints and drawings, furniture and paintings and several archives.
Counting with decimal numbers - Simon Stevin
The basis for the US dollar is found in Simon Stevin's book 'de Thiende'.
©Museum Plantin-Moretus
De Thiende
Stevin was both a mathematician and an inventor. He designed mills, sluices, dredging machines and even a land yacht. In physics, he formulated the law of the inclined plane. With the decimal notation he described in De Thiende, calculations became far simpler.
Plantin printed one of the most influential mathematical treatises of its time: De Thiende by Simon Stevin of Bruges. In it, the mathematical genius explains how to use decimal fractions for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and extracting roots.
The first American dollar was introduced in 1792. Thomas Jefferson wanted the currency to be based on the decimal system and referred to Stevin’s De Thiende in his argument. His proposal succeeded: 1 dollar equals 100 cents, and a quarter dollar 25 cents.
©Museum Plantin-Moretus
iStevin Simon, De Thiende (Antwerpen: Christoffel Plantijn, 1585), Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerpen
