Topic summary
Less than
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Inequality (mathematics).
Notation
In the 17th and 18th centuries, personal notations or typewriting signs were used to signal inequalities. For example, In 1670, John Wallis used a single horizontal bar above rather than below the < and >. Later in 1734, ≦ and ≧, known as "less than (greater-than) over equal to" or "less than (greater than) or equal to with double horizontal bars", first appeared in Pierre Bouguer's work . After that, mathematicians simplified Bouguer's symbol to "less than (greater than) or equal to with one horizontal bar" (≤), or "less than (greater than) or slanted equal to" (⩽).