Information About ®Roman Numerals |
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The system of Roman numerals is a Numeral System originating in ancient Rome , and was adapted from Etruscan Numerals . The system used in Classical Antiquity was slightly modified in the Middle Ages to produce the system we use today. It is based on certain letters which are given values as numerals. Roman numerals are commonly used today in numbered lists (in outline format), clockfaces, pages preceding the main body of a book, chord triads in music analysis, the numbering of movie sequels, the production date at the end of movie credits, and the numbering of some sport events, such as the Olympic Games or the Super Bowls . For arithmetics involving Roman numerals, see Roman Arithmetic and Roman Abacus . SYMBOLS Roman numerals use a basic set of seven symbols:
For the numbers not assigned a specific symbol, the above given symbols are combined:
For very large numbers ( Five Thousand and above), a bar is placed above a base numeral to indicate multiplication by 1000:
ORIGINS Although the Roman numerals are now written with letters of the Roman alphabet, they were originally separate symbols. The Etruscans, for example, used I Λ X 8 ⊕ for I V X L C M. They appear to derive from notches on ''. When the tallies were later transferred to writing, the marks were easily identified with the existing Roman letters I, V, X. (A Folk Etymology has it that the V represented a hand, and that the X was made by placing two Vs on top of each other, one inverted.) The tenth V or X along the stick received an extra stroke. Thus 50 was written variously as N, И, K, Ψ, , ''etc.'', but perhaps most often as a chicken-track shape like a superimposed V and I. This had flattened to (an inverted T) by the time of Augustus , and soon thereafter became identified with the graphically similar letter L. Likewise, 100 was variously Ж, , , H, or as any of the symbols for 50 above plus an extra stroke. The form Ж (that is, a superimposed X and I) came to predominate, was written variously as >I< or IC, was then shortened to or C, with C finally winning out because, as a letter, it stood for ''centum'' (Latin for 'hundred'). The hundredth V or X was marked with a box or circle. Thus 500 was like a superposed on a or (that is, like a Þ with a cross bar), becoming a struck-through ZERO In general, the number Zero did not have its own Roman numeral, but the concept of zero as a number was well known by all medieval Computists (responsible for calculating the date of Easter ). They included zero (via the Latin word ''nulla'' meaning nothing) as one of nineteen Epact s, or the age of the moon on March 22 . The first three epacts were nullae, xi, and xxii (written in Minuscule or lower case). The first known computist to use zero was Dionysius Exiguus in 525, but the concept of zero was no doubt well known earlier. Only one instance of a Roman numeral for zero is known. About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter N , the initial of ''nullae'', in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals. A notation for the ''value'' zero is quite distinct from the role of the ''digit'' zero in a Positional Notation system. The lack of a zero digit prevented Roman numerals from developing into a positional notation, and led to their gradual replacement by Hindu-Arabic Numerals in the early Second Millennium . On the other hand lack of positional notation may have prevented the romans to develop a "zero". Which affected which is not certain. IIII OR IV? The notation of Roman numerals has varied through the centuries. Originally, it was common to use IIII to represent "four", because IV represented the god , without conveying the benefits of a full Positional Notation system. Likewise, on some buildings it is possible to see MDCCCCX, for example, representing 1910 instead of MCMX - notably Admiralty Arch in London. Calendars and clocks Clock faces that are labelled using Roman numerals conventionally show IIII for 4 o'clock and IX for 9 o'clock, using the subtractive principle in one case and not in the other. There are several suggested explanations for this, several of which may be true:
:IIX and one of the IX's can be rearranged or inverted to form XI and XII. The alternative uses seventeen I's, five V's, and four X's, possibly requiring the clock maker to have several different molds.
XCIX OR IC? Rules regarding Roman numerals often state that a symbol representing 10x may not precede any symbol larger than 10x+1. For example, C cannot be preceded by I or V, only by X (or, of course, by a symbol representing a value equal to or larger than C). Thus, one should represent the number "ninety-nine" as XCIX, not as the "shortcut" IC. However, these rules are not universally followed. This 'problem' manifested in questions as to why 1999 was not written simply IMM or MIM as opposed to the virtually universal MCMXCIX. YEAR IN ROMAN NUMERALS In seventeenth century Europe, using Roman numerals for the year of publication for books was standard; there were many other places it was used as well. Publishers attempted to make the number easier to read by those more accustomed to Arabic positional numerals. On British title pages, there were often spaces between the groups of digits: M DCC LXI is one example. This may have come from the French, who separated the groups of digits with Period s, as: M.DCC.LXI. or M. DCC. LXI. Notice the period at the end of the sequence; many foreign countries did this for Roman numerals in general, but not necessarily Britain. (Periods were also common on each side of numerals in running text, as in "commonet .iij. viros illos".) These practices faded from general use before the start of the Twentieth Century , though the Cornerstone s of major buildings still occasionally use them. Roman numerals are today still used on building faces for dates: 2006 can be represented as MMVI. The film industry has used them perhaps since its inception to denote the year a film was made, so that it could be redistributed later, either locally or to a foreign country, without making it immediately clear to viewers what the actual date was. This became more useful when films were broadcast on television to partially conceal the age of films. From this came the policy of the broadcasting industry, including the BBC , to use them to denote the year in which a television program was made (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has largely stopped this practice but still occasionally lapses). OTHER MODERN USAGE BY ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES Roman numerals remained in common use until about the 14th century, when they were replaced by Arabic Numerals (thought to have been introduced to Europe from Al-Andalus , by way of Arab traders and arithmetic treatises, around the 11th century). The use of Roman numerals today is mostly restricted to Ordinal numbers, such as volumes or chapters in a book or the numbers identifying monarchs or popes (eg. Elizabeth II , Benedict XVI , etc.) Sometimes the numerals are written using lower-case letters (thus: i, ii, iii, iv, etc.), particularly if numbering paragraphs or sections within chapters, or for the pagination of the front matter of a book. Undergraduate degrees at British universities are generally graded using I, IIi, IIii, III for first, upper second (often pronounced "two one"), lower second (often pronounced "two two") and third class respectively. Modern English usage also employs Roman numerals in many books (especially anthologies), movies (eg. Star Wars ), sporting events (eg. the Olympic Games , the Super Bowl ), and historic events (eg. World War I , World War II ). The common unifying theme seems to be stories or events that are episodic or annual in nature, with the use of classical numbering suggesting importance or timelessness. In Chemistry , Roman numerals were used to denote the Group in the Periodic Table Of The Elements . But there was not international agreement as to whether the group of metals which dissolve in water should be called Group IA or IB, for example, so although references may use them, the international norm has recently switched to Arabic numerals. In Music Theory , Diatonic Function s, Scale Degree s and the Triads that have these degrees as their roots are often identified by Roman numerals (as in Chord Symbol s). Upper-case Roman numerals indicate major triads while lower-case Roman numerals indicate minor triads, as the following chart illustrates. The leading tone triad is diminished. MODERN NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING USAGE The above uses are customary for English-speaking countries. Although many of them are also maintained in other countries, those countries have additional uses for Roman numerals which are unknown in English-speaking regions. The French , the Portuguese , and the Spanish use capital Roman numerals to denote centuries. For example, 'XVIII' refers to the Eighteenth Century , so as to avoid confusion between the '18th century' and the '1800s'. (The Italians take the opposite approach, basing names of centuries on the digits of the years; '' Quattrocento '' for example is the Italian name for the Fifteenth Century .) Some scholars in English-speaking countries have adopted the French method, among them Lyon Sprague De Camp . In , for example. This method has the advantage that days and months are not confused in rapid note-taking, and that any range of days or months can be expressed without confusion. For instance, V-VIII is May to August, while 1-V-31-VIII is May first to August thirty-first. In Eastern Europe , especially the Baltic nations, Roman numerals are used to represent the days of the week in hours-of-operation signs displayed in windows or on doors of businesses. Monday is represented by I, which is the initial day of the Week . Sunday is represented by VII, which is the final day of the week. The hours of operation signs are tables composed of two columns where the left column is the day of the week in Roman numerals and the right column is a range of hours of operation from starting time to closing time. The following example hours-of-operation table would be for a business whose hours of operation are 9:30AM to 5:30PM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays; 9:30AM to 7:00PM on Tuesdays and Fridays; and 9:30AM to 1:00PM on Saturdays; and which is closed on Sundays. Since the French use capital Roman numerals to refer to the Quarters Of The Year ('III' is the Third Quarter ), and this has become the norm in some European standards organisation, the mixed Roman-Arabic method of recording the date has switched to lowercase Roman numerals in many circles, as '4-viii-1961'. ( ISO has since specified that dates should be given in all Arabic numerals, in ISO 8601 formats.) In Romania , Roman numerals are used for Floor Numbering . Roman numerals are rarely used in Asia . The Motion Picture Rating System in Hong Kong uses categories I, IIA, IIB, and III based on Roman numerals. ALTERNATE FORMS In the Middle Ages, Latin writers used a horizontal line above a particular numeral to represent one thousand times that numeral, and additional vertical lines on both sides of the numeral to denote one hundred times the number, as in these examples:
Sometimes CIƆ was reduced to an Lemniscate symbol () for denoting 1,000. John Wallis is often credited for introducing this symbol to represent infinity, and one conjecture is that he based it off of this usage, since 1,000 was Hyperbolically used to represent very large numbers. In medieval times, before the letter ''j'' emerged as a distinct letter, a series of letters ''i'' in Roman numerals was commonly ended with a flourish; hence they actually looked like ''ij'', ''iij'', ''iiij'', etc. This proved useful in preventing fraud, as it was impossible, for example, to add another ''i'' to ''vij'' to get ''viij''. This practice is now merely an antiquarian's note; it is never used. (It did, however, lead to the Dutch Diphthong IJ .) TABLE OF ROMAN NUMERALS The "modern" Roman numerals, post- Victorian Era , are shown below: An accurate way to write large numbers in Roman numerals is to handle first the thousands, then hundreds, then tens, then units. Example: the number 1988. One thousand is M, nine hundred is CM, eighty is LXXX, eight is VIII. Put it together: MCMLXXXVIII (). Unicode has a number of characters specifically designated as Roman numerals, as part of the ''Number Forms'' range from U+2160 to U+2183. For example, MCMLXXXVIII could alternatively be written as . This range includes both upper- and lowercase numerals, as well as pre-combined Glyphs for numbers up to 12 ( or XII), mainly intended for the clock faces for Compatibility with non–West-European encodings. The pre-combined glyphs should only be used to represent the individual numbers where the use of individual glyphs is not wanted, and not to replace compounded numbers. Similarly precombined glyphs for 5000 and 10000 exist. The Unicode characters are present only for Compatibility with other character standards which provide these characters; for ordinary uses, the regular Latin letters are preferred. Displaying these characters requires a User Agent that can handle Unicode and a Font that contains appropriate glyphs for them. GAMES After the Renaissance , the Roman system could also be used to write Chronogram s. It was common to put in the first page of a book some phrase, so that when adding the I, V, X, L, C, D, M present in the phrase, the reader would obtain a number, usually the year of publication. The phrase was often (but not always) in Latin, as chronograms can be rendered in any language that utilises the Roman alphabet. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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