Who invented subtraction?

Some of our earliest written records tell us that the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were using basic math operations. Subtraction is one of four traditional operations, which also include addition, multiplication, and division. Early use of the minus sign that we use today was discovered in a German manuscript dating from 1481. After studying this manuscript, Johannes Widman published his bookMercantile Arithmetic using the minus sign to indicate subtraction.