What country gets most of the credit for first using the symbol for zero and when did this first happen?

Answer 1

Other answerers are perfectly correct that India OUGHT to get all the credit for first using zero, and when.

However, the Arabs copied it from India, and due to Muslim arrogance and dishonesty, they have been getting most of the credit even though they deserve none of it.

Answer 2

By the mid 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonians had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. By 300 BC a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating from perhaps as far back as 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu wrote his zeroes with three hooks, rather than two slanted wedges.

Early use of something like zero by the Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th-2nd century BC), implied at first glance by his use of binary numbers, is only the modern binary representation using 0 and 1 applied to Pingala's binary system, which used short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code. Nevertheless, he and other Indian scholars at the time used the Sanskrit word śūnya (the origin of the word zero after a series of transliterations and a literal translation) to refer to zero or void.

Answer 3

The Indians did it first. It was Arayabhatta an astronomer who did it in about 6th century BC.

Answer 4

It was in India, I believe.

Read here for all you care to know...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29#History

Answer 5

It was either the Aztecs or the Mayans, but I can't remember when

Answer 6

The Mayans did it first.