Above is a clock face using Greek numerals. I've wondered for a while if there was a Greek equivalent to the Roman numerals. Turns out there is, although the system is a little different. It uses more of the Greek alphabet. And it's still somewhat in use to this day, for certain things in Greece.
Anyway, a bit of useless trivia? Perhaps, but I'd like to use it for something one of these days.
2 comments:
Ah, your first post in Greek! It's fascinating to consider just how beneficial arabic numerals came to be instrumental in making it easier for ordinary people to calculate. Of course I could be wrong about that since I also know there were some pretty sophisticated systems in the distant past, including the Greek example you show here. I mean somehow the Egyptians managed to build some marvelous constructions without them and the Greeks are famed for ther architecture. Still, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be easy to divide MCMLXVI by XXXIX and fractions are probably impossible.
I'd be interested to see how you might use the Greek numerals in a story.
The thing about Arabic numerals is that they're not sophisticated. That's why they've come in so handy. There had to be some ingenuity in coming up with them, but it's about the most intuitive to use numbering system anyone's come up with. For obvious anatomical reasons we tend to gravitate to base 10, so it has ten digits including zero, and it's easy to put them together.
The way they kept track of numbers in Ancient Egypt is indeed fascinating. As you point out they did manage to build the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids with this. I don't envy them, though.
I haven't figured out what I'll do with the Greek numerals. They're on a shelf in my head, waiting to be pulled down.
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