Multiplication is a fundamental operation of arithmetic whose use stretches far back into antiquity. Ancient civilizations found the need to 'tally up' the quantities of various goods that were gathered together to be stored, sold, or bartered. Hence the need arose for arithmetic. The most basic and earliest arithmetic operation used would have been for the combining of numbers (i.e., addition). Given large numbers of transactions, it should not be too difficult to imagine how early mankind developed a notation to indicate the repetitive addition of numbers, thereby devising multiplication. That is to say, multiplication was (and is) a kind of shorthand notation for the operation of addition. For instance, the multiplication of 6 by 5 indicates the successive addition of "6" five times (6 + 6 + 6 + 6 + 6); the resulting number "30" is called the product of "6 times 5". Over the course of time, multiplication tables and other techniques were devised to aid in finding the...