The ancient Greeks worked with ⍺*2 (they did not use this notation, of course, not having Unicode APL characters☺), including using x²-2=0 to prove that irrational numbers exist. ⍺*2 and ⍺*3 were also known to Persian mathematicians.
In the late 16th century, the notation x with superscript Roman numerals was used. Also in the 16th century, the terms square (⍺*2), cube (⍺*3), zenzizenzic (⍺*4), sursolid (⍺*5), zenicube (⍺*6), second sursolid (⍺*7), and zenzizenzizenzic (⍺*8) were used. I believe these came from viewing ⍺*⍵ not as a dyadic function but as a series of monadic functions, in current APL notation (*∘k)⍺. The terminology (and notation) bring to mind a quote from C.F. Gauss:
If one formerly contemplated [imaginary numbers] from a false point of view and therefore found a mysterious darkness, this is in large part attributable to clumsy terminology. Had one not called +1, −1, √−1 positive, negative, or imaginary (or even impossible) units, but instead, say, direct, inverse, or lateral units, then there could scarcely have been talk of such darkness.
— C.F. Gauss [Gauss 1831, p.638], translated in [Ewald 1996, p.313]
Even Isaac Newton preferred to use exponents only for powers greater than 2, writing squares as repeated multiplication. Thus: ax+bxx+cx³+d.
As with much else in mathematics, in 1748 Leonhard Euler provided a key insight:
consider exponentials or powers in which the exponent itself is a variable
(That is, ⍺*⍵ as a dyadic function.)
With better understanding of complex numbers (themselves invented/discovered by consideration of roots of polynomials, for example x²+1=0) and applying the key ideas of closure and extension, we have the modern understanding of ⍺*⍵ ←→ *⍵×⍟⍺.
Finally, Iverson rationalized the notation to ⍺*⍵ [Iverson 1966, pp.45-46; Falkoff and Iverson 1967], with the infix notation and operating on entire arrays. Among other things, this makes possible a more convenient notation */⍵ for the power tower.
There remain pitfalls for the unwary. In APL, in 1981 with the implementation of complex numbers, the result of ¯8*÷3 was changed from ¯2 to 1j1.73205 [Hui and Kromberg 2020, §10.3]. Why? 1j1.73205 is the principal cube root of ¯8 and also that ⍺*⍵ ←→ *⍵×⍟⍺. Another pitfall is thinking that 0*0 is indeterminate or somehow problematic. As recently as 1992, Donald Knuth evangelized for 1=0*0 [Knuth 1992]. Some authors write power series as Σai×x*i (i from 0) while arguing that 0*0 is not 1. Other authors, aware of the issue, write power series as a0 + Σai×x*i (i from 1) to avoid the "problem" (that is, the equivalent of writing 1++/(⍵*i)÷!i←1+⍳n instead of +/(⍵*i)÷!i←⍳n for the power series for exp(⍵)).
In a stroke of genius, Iverson also defined ⍣ as the power operator [Iverson 1978]. The power operator plays a role in computability theory similar to that played by the power set in set theory [Hui and Kromberg 2020, §11.6].
References
- Ewald, W.B., From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 1. Oxford University Press, 1996.
- Falkoff, A.D., and K.E. Iverson, The APL\360 Terminal System, Research Report RC-1922, IBM Corporation, 1967.
- Gauss, C.F, Anzeige von Theoria residuorum biquadraticorum, commentatio secunda (Notice on the Theory of Biquadratic Residues, second treatise), Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, 1831-04-23. Translated in [Ewald 1996].
- Hui, R.K.W., and M.J. Kromberg, APL Since 1978, Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Language, volume 4, number HOPL, 2020-06.
- Iverson, K.E., Elementary Functions: An Algorithmic Treatment, Science Research Associates, 1966.
- Iverson, K.E., Operators and Functions, Research Report Number #RC7091, IBM Corporation, 1978-04-26.
- Knuth, D.E., Two Notes on Notation, American Mathematical Monthly, volume 99, number 5, 1992-05-01.
- Wikipedia, Exponentiation, 2021.