Uptown Gallery wrote:
> Roman numerology: There are some weird and less conventional
> patterns, like IX = V (rare) and maybe the article being 100-ish
> years old has something to do with it.
The Romans wrote 4 as . 4 = IV is a medieval invention (according
to my wife with a degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies).
> But IXX sounds 'normal' to me - whenever a smaller 'number' precedes
> a larger, it is subtracted from the following larger 'numbers'. IXX
> = (-1) + 2(10) = 19
I would expect 19 to be XIX (10 + 9, or 10 + 10 - 1). You're supposed
to group the various powers of ten (units, tens, hundreds, etc.)
together.
I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, L = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000
> 2003 = MMIII
> but
> 1997 = IIIMM
I believe that 1997 is MCMXCVII (1000 + 900 + 90 + 5 + 2).
There is a pretty nifty web page for converting Arabic Numerals to
Roman and doing date conversions.
http://www.guernsey.net/~sgibbs/roman.html>
Movies and TV shows used Roman Numerals in their Copyright notices
until the 1990's. I suspect they stop because they thought it was too
hard for people to figure out the dates. Today I see some people
switching back to Roman Numerals (2003 = MMIII), and many not putting
any date with their Copyright notice.
> incredibly stupid invention - an LED dot matrix display Roman
> Numeral Clock...kit, no less, in a wood cabinet.
>
> If I wanted a furniture-finish clock, why the heck would I want to
> look at LED's forming hours minutes and seconds in dot matrix
> patterns with bad 'Roman Numeral grammar', the V being an
> example of the latter? It was as ugly as it was stupid.
Perhaps the person who built the clock was being humorous. I've seen
at least one cartoon of a grandfather clock with a digital display.
Maybe he was making a statement about putting electronic clock works
(most of the clock faces you see with Roman Numerals have Quartz
movements behind them) in a hand made clock case.
Or maybe he was doing because he could. Pretty much the reason I use
a pinhole when a lens could produce a "better" picture.
> I'll stick with a sun dial if I want Roman Numerals on my clock
> faces!
I'd expect a Moorish sundial to have Arabic Numerals. :)
--
Brian Reynolds | "But in the new approach, as you know,
reyno...@panix.com | the important thing is to understand
http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | what you're doing rather than to get
NAR# 54438 | the right answer." -- Tom Lehrer
