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On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

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Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#91

Post by owlninja »

staplung wrote: post #73
swman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.

Ha, that's nothin'. The ancient Egyptians used a 365 day calendar (with no leap years) so it drifted by .25 days every year. So after 730 years it's essentially backwards (summer solstice is when winter solstice used to be etc.). After that, it starts coming back into alignment again but takes another 730 years to get there. They used their calendar for so long that it nearly had time to roll over like this twice!

Somehow, for the first time ever, I recently heard the idea of the 13 month year and I sort of nodded my head in interest. Then I heard someone breakdown the history of calendars and it really blew my mind. Mainly the amount of thought that went into it and the incredible span of time it was revised and discussed!

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#92

Post by pfannkuchen »

nvader wrote: post #9

The reason that I heard was that it was easy to mass-engrave a single plate: VIIIIX For each clock, you make 4 of these, and split each block into numbers the following way: V IIII I X VI III IX (mirror the IX for 11) VII II IX VIII IIX This lets you mass produce watch numbers with a minimum of wasted material.

Nit: Does the plate need a fifth I?

Also 12 needs to be mirrored I think.

Otherwise lgtm.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#93

Post by [deleted] »

gsky wrote: post #78
swman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.

Indian Empire is older than Roman Empire if i'm not wrong and even America had emires before Europeans colonized. You need to read more history

[deleted]

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#94

Post by mminer237 »

gsky wrote: post #78
swman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.

Indian Empire is older than Roman Empire if i'm not wrong and even America had emires before Europeans colonized. You need to read more history

???

What is the "Indian Empire"? The Mughal Empire? That lasted like 300 years.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#95

Post by t-3 »

ghaff wrote: post #10

I wonder how much Roman numerals are even taught any longer. Maybe 5 years ago now I was traveling with a friend who went to a solid US suburban high school outside of a major city. Younger than me but certainly not young. And she asked me what a date written in Roman numerals was in the numbering system we normally use. I was somewhat floored. Thinking about it though. It sort of is cultural/historical trivia. How m…

I don't know about now, but ~25 years ago when I was in kindergarten one the things they focused on teaching was telling time and reading clocks, which came with reading Roman numerals.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#96

Post by supriyo-biswas »

mminer237 wrote: post #94
gsky wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian Empire is older than Roman Empire if i'm not wrong and even America had emires before Europeans colonized. You need to read more history

??? What is the "Indian Empire"? The Mughal Empire? That lasted like 300 years.

I guess if we're talking about the Indus Valley Civilization[1] we're looking at a range of 700-2000 years based on how you define the start and end, but even that cannot be considered as equivalent to "India" which was formed as the union of multiple princely states around the general region after the end of colonial rule.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#98

Post by kypro »

ghaff wrote: post #10

I wonder how much Roman numerals are even taught any longer. Maybe 5 years ago now I was traveling with a friend who went to a solid US suburban high school outside of a major city. Younger than me but certainly not young. And she asked me what a date written in Roman numerals was in the numbering system we normally use. I was somewhat floored. Thinking about it though. It sort of is cultural/historical trivia. How m…

My GF works in schools here in the UK. According to her a lot of kids can't read analogue clocks any more because they all check the time on their phones.

In her opinion it's probably partly related to Covid too because although they do still teach it in school (at least here in the UK), there's a cohort of kids who missed a lot of basic stuff like this during lockdowns. So I think here in the UK kids around the age of 11-12 really struggle with this specifically because roman numerals and analogue clocks is something they typically would learn around the age of 7-8.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#99

Post by schoen »

morcus wrote: post #65
swman wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.

If you consider the so-called Byzantines to be Romans (and you should, for lots of reasons), the Roman state was at least a notable regional power all the way from the mid 300s BCE all the way up to 1204 - that's around 1500 years. And it existed for a few hundred years more on either end. Truly boggles the mind.

I remember someone (maybe Tamim Ansary?) writing that states that claimed to be the direct successor of the Roman Empire existed until 1922, at least in the sense that the Ottoman Empire used some titles and administrative terminology of the Byzantine Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sultans_of_the_Ottoman...

> After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, Ottoman sultans came to regard themselves as the successors of the Roman Empire, hence their occasional use of the titles caesar (قیصر qayser) of Rûm, and emperor, as well as the caliph of Islam.

A more direct name claim would be

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum

which lasted until 1308.

A different later tradition of claiming to be the Roman emperor is the Holy Roman Empire's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

which used that term after a break of several centuries (so not very continuously with the ancient Roman Empire). But Germans then claimed to be Roman emperors (in some sense) until 1806!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

These aren't as continuous with the ancient Roman empire as the Byzantines, but it's still pretty astonishing to think that various monarchs were still claiming to be (in at least a theoretical legal sense) Roman emperors during the 1800s and 1900s.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#100

Post by eternauta3k »

owlninja wrote: post #91
staplung wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, that's nothin'. The ancient Egyptians used a 365 day calendar (with no leap years) so it drifted by .25 days every year. So after 730 years it's essentially backwards (summer solstice is when winter solstice used to be etc.). After that, it starts coming back into alignment again but takes another 730 years to get there. They used their calendar for so long that it nearly had time to roll over like this twice!

Somehow, for the first time ever, I recently heard the idea of the 13 month year and I sort of nodded my head in interest. Then I heard someone breakdown the history of calendars and it really blew my mind. Mainly the amount of thought that went into it and the incredible span of time it was revised and discussed!

This is an excellent podcast on the history of timekeeping: https://www.hi101.ca/?p=566
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