> Nicholas Bodley wrote:
>
> > My source is a book about the history of numbers/numerals:
> > _Menninger, Karl A., Number Words and Number Symbols, ...tr. by
> > Paul Broneer from the rev. German Ed._ MIT Press, 1969. I do not
> > recall the page nor chapter, but there is an illustration. Btw,
> > there is another, better-known Karl Menninger; this is not [he].
> >
> > Btw, Googling on [history numbers book] seems fruitless; I was
> > probably at the 100th hit and still hadn't found this. The book is
> > in our local library's (Minuteman) catalog.
> >
> > This book did have some commentary about the use of letters as
> > numerals, but I no longer recall how much. Some vandal had removed
> > all the pages dealing with Jewish numbers in our local library's
> > copy; of course, I don't know why.
>
> It's been reprinted by Dover -- I don't know whether it's still
> available.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...

The Dover reprint is still in print and available (actually, it's only $12
US at Amazon, remarkably). However, the problem with this version and the
Broneer translation is that some genius decided that there was no need to
translate and reproduce Menninger's extensive list of references, so it's
not exactly useful from a scholarly perspective. But it is an interesting
read - especially if you're interested in Germanic numeration, but also from
a worldwide comparative perspective.