123 INVENTIONS/MATHEMATICS/THE EQUALS SIGN

123 INVENTIONS/MATHEMATICS/THE EQUALS SIGN

The Equals sign (=)was invented in 1557 by Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde. He chose the two lines because as he put it "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle". Upon hearing this his research assistant, Dai 'Taffy' Edwards, was immediately plunged into a coma.
Like all research assistants Taffy did all the thinking, and it was this phrase that locked his enormous brain in a never ending iterative logic cycle. No 2 things more equal? Taffy could think of many things more equal than a couple of hastily drawn lines. The size of his bosses stupidity and the size of the universe for starters.
2 dots : would have been a lot more accurate and more simple than those 2 lines. What about a simple line _, and leave the observer to appreciate the beauty of where that line dissects into 2 equal parts?
Taffy's logic loop grew in size and anger. However, Robert Recorde thought that Taffy was sulking again because he'd nicked yet another of his ideas. Robert ignored the danger of Taffy's ever increasing head temperature and used it to dry out his tea towels.
Near death and after drying 1300 Irish linen cloths, Taffy's thought processes were freed. Taffy went beyond thought. He realised that thoughts were not important. He realised that the core thought was the "I" thought and was neither positive or negative. Just a conceptual pointer towards something that does not exist. Concepts can never grasp the real. Taffy was not real, Robert was not real and the world and the Universe was not real. Taffy woke up.
He took the almost dry tea-towel off his rapidly cooling head and left Robert to get on with meaningless nonsense.
Taffy having discovered the secret of immortality, is alive today amusing himself by trying to convince Benedict Farse to leave Bill Gates alone.