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In his 1557 work The Whetstone of Witte, BritishmathematicianRobert Recorde proposed an exponentnotation by prime factorisation, which remained in use up until the eighteenth century and acquired the name Arabic exponent notation. The principle of Arabic exponents was quite similar to Egyptian fractions; large exponents were broken down into smaller prime numbers. Squares and cubes were so called; prime numbers from five onwards were called sursolids.
Although the terms used for defining exponents differed between authors and times, the general system was the primary exponent notation until René Descartes devised the Cartesian exponent notation, which is still used today.