Zero was invented twice — and the second time changed everything

The concept of zero as a number (rather than just an absence) was developed independently in ancient India (Brahmagupta, 628 AD) and among the Maya. The Indian zero, transmitted through Arabic mathematicians to Europe as part of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, made positional notation possible — the same digit means different things depending on its position. Without zero, long multiplication and division require the cumbersome Roman numeral system; with it, the algorithm (the word comes from al-Khwarizmi, who transmitted the Indian system) becomes trivial. Modern computing is built on binary: 0 and 1.

Source: Seife, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000)