The ways that notations we use block progress are often invisible, so we need to step back and understand how they work if we are going to escape them. Numbers are good examples.

Science and engineering can't go far without the ability to write the results of measurements of any size. It took the equivalent of a PhD to do division with Roman numerals. So the abacus was used for arithmetic. Thus the Romans had to deal with two barely-related representation systems. The addition of zero to our numeral system finally made simple arithmetic possible.