Does anybody know who, when, and where (citations and/or references
are desirable) was FIRST introduced, in an explicit form, the AGREEMENT
that the two notations, say in the binary system, such as:
(1) 0, a1 a2 . . . ak 1 0 0 0 . . . ,
and
(2) 0, a1 a2 . . . ak 0 1 1 1 . . . ,
where all ai (i = 1, 2, ..., k) are "0" or "1",
are two DIFFERENT representations of THE SAME rational number (here -
proper fraction) ?
Thanks in advance,
Alexander Zenkin