Did i get that right

[Alexander941]

IMMM DCCXCII CDLVIII

The line should be over the Numerals.
So did i get the Speed of light, in roman numerals, right?

Dont know how the romans wrote such huge numbers cause the thing with the line, which will multiply the number below with 1000, is, as far as i know, an Invention of the middleages.

Ny Ideas?

[digress]

Sadly nobody knows. There aren't enough Megaman sequels to tell us.

[octopus1]

IMMM DCCXCII CDLVIII

The line should be over the Numerals.
So did i get the Speed of light, in roman numerals, right?

Dont know how the romans wrote such huge numbers cause the thing with the line, which will multiply the number below with 1000, is, as far as i know, an Invention of the middleages.

Ny Ideas?

Pass the bong dude, I could use whatever you're smoking right now...

[Alexander941]

I dont smoke anything, all i take is a lot of soups, tea (tons of it), antidepresants and chocolate.

Maybe my Mom puts something in the food, tomorrow ill dine at my parents place, I'll ask.

[octopus1]

I dont smoke anything, all i take is a lot of soups, tea (tons of it), antidepresants and chocolate.

Maybe my Mom puts something in the food, tomorrow ill dine at my parents place, I'll ask.

Please do, because I'm bewildered

[Gord]

mmmm, soups....

[Austin Harper]

Note: I'm going to have to use underlines rather than overlines due to limitations of the formatting available on the board.

There really isn't a clear answer to your question. The main problem is that the Romans didn't have much reason to write very large numbers. As the use of Roman numerals continued over the centuries, new methods were created to write large numbers. Sometime in the Middle Ages the overline techinque you mentioned was invented, but it wasn't consistently used. So while putting a line over the number usually indicated that a value was multiplied by 1000, that wasn't always the case. Even more confusing, putting vertical bars on either side of a number sometimes meant an additional multiplication by 1000. This is especially hard to read in this font because a sans serif I looks a lot like a |.

Now let's make it even more confusing. Sometimes underlines, overlines, bars were just used to separate the numbers from the rest of the text! So if you saw the letter M with a box drawn around it, it could mean 1,000 or 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000.

And then there's the subtraction rule, so IV means (V)-(I) = (5)-(1) = 4 and not (I)+(V)=(1)+(5)=6.
So IV=4, IX=9, XC=90. But you can't use IC for 99, you have to use XCIX which is parsed as (XC)(IX) because you have to separate the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.

I think the best way to write 299,792,458 would be |CCXCIX|DCCXCIICDLVIII which breaks down as:

• |CCXCIX| = |(CC)(XC)(IX)| = (200+90+9)×1000×1000 = 299,000,000
• DCCXCII = (DCC)(XC)(II) = (700+90+2)×1000 = 792,000
• CDLVIII = (CD)(L)(VIII) = (400+50+8) = 458

[Matthew Ellard]

There really isn't a clear answer to your question. The main problem is that the Romans didn't have much reason to write very large numbers.

Absolutely. Exact numbers large numbers are never required . We studied this in languages for anthropology using Pigin ( pidgin) as our model. Languages replace numbers with "collectives" which give an indication as to number. ie "eons".