Friday, August 10, 2007
No Big Ben
This is no Big Ben, but only a clock outside the Datran center in Miami. I nonchalantly took this picture this morning, thinking I'd never use it, but here it is. I just noticed that it has the same defect as a wall clock I bought for my office, which is a beautiful clock displaying a Puccini's Turandot poster on its face. My Turandot clock also has Roman numerals like this one, and both have the same problem! Can you tell what it is? The time I took this photo? DCCCXXVII.
Hi, you are probably referring to the number four depicted as IIII and not as IV. Here's an article that addresses this issue.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
That's an interesting site to read. Thank you for pointing it out. I always thought that IIII is not a correct Roman numeral representation. The Roman numeral system does not use 4 identical symbols to denote numbers using addition. They use subtraction instead. It is not correct to use four symbols to represent the numbers 4, 40, 9, 90 etc... (i.e. IIII, XXXX, VIIII, LXXXX) The correct way is to say IV for 4, IX for 9, XL for 40 and XC for 90. The rational is economy in symbols. I was hoping my Turandot clock would gain in value because of this mistake.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. Now you know it's not a defect.
ReplyDelete