[USMA:32918] [Slightly OT, humor] Roman vs. decimals: what metric conversion would have looked like in another time and place

[Kent K. Steinbrenner]

I have been in the process of converting old LPs into digital music files recently, ever since I got a turntable hooked up to my computer. As it has been a while since I’ve had a turntable, I’ve been listening to a lot of albums that I haven’t heard in ten years!   The Frantics were a sketch comedy group that aired on CBC Radio in the early-to-mid 1980s. They released an album on the CBC’s own record label back in 1984 called “Frantic Times.” (It’s long since gone out of print, but I still have my copy.)   One of the sketches is a real gem—I heard it last night for the first time in ten years, and the humour still holds up. Imagine you’re in Ancient Rome and the government has decreed that you will no longer count in Roman numerals, but in this newfangled “decimal” system. If you’re not a youngster who’s learning it in school, chances are you’ll grumble and moan and make disparaging remarks about how “impossible” the decimal system is to learn.   (Yes, yes, we all know that it never happened that way; that Hindu/Arabic numbers and the concept of zero arrived in Europe after the Roman Empire fell… but let’s not get facts get in the way of a few chuckles. <smile>)   Obviously, this sketch was written at a time when the majority of the Canadian population was still adjusting to SI, so it’s a good commentary on the times the writers were living in.   I’ve posted sound files of the sketch to my website:   WMA: 256 KHz encoding, 6 MB http://www.2kents.com/files/Roman_Numerals.WMA   MP3: 192 KHz encoding, 4.49 MB http://www.2kents.com/files/RomanNumerals_TheFrantics.mp3   Enjoy! :-)   —Kent