![]() Our JavaScript Calculator has a limitation of the accuracy of your browser, usually 18 digits. Using the strict rules of Roman Numerals, the largest number that can be represented is 4,999. There is a more detailed explanation below the calculator. These are the characters that are used in Roman numerals, and the values they represent. It is obvious to the most casual computer programmer, that digital electronics would have never been invented if left to the Romans. The big differences between Roman and Arabic numerals (the ones we use today) are that Romans didn't have a symbol for zero, and that numeral placement within a number can sometimes indicate subtraction rather than addition. In fact, the entire metric system is a pretty good example of our retaining the entire concept. A few examples include unit, unilateral, duo, triple, quadricep, septuagenarian, decade, milliliter. The Roman numbering system also lives on in our languages, which still use Latin word roots to express numerical ideas. More recently, they were used to indicate the anniversary of SuperBowl games. ![]() Roman Numerals are also often still used in the publishing and media industries for copyright dates, in construction for time capsules and on cornerstones, and in the life and death of society, on headstones when the family of the deceased wishes to create an impression of classical dignity, or in many cases, the illusion of such. They are used for family offspring of the same name, often II instead of Jr., and III for the third. In usage, Roman Numerals traditionally indicate the order of rulers, church leaders or ships that share the same name (such as the Queen Elizabeth II). Though extremely awkward and cumbersome, the system they developed lasted many centuries, and still sees some limited, but specialized, use today. From the time of learning to write, Roman scholars needed a way to indicate numbers and devised the set of characters now known as Roman Numerals. Though the Chinese had a useful and superior math system, the Romans were either unaware of it or unimpressed by it. They were not only active in trade and commerce, they were dominant. The Romans were world leaders prior to the fall of Rome. Bring your lunch because it is an all day job. Long division? Well that was your everyday Roman problem, more like calculation. Zero came later, about 1000AD, the best we can determin. Both the Roman Numeral and later Arabic Number systems are "Base 10" (though only 1 thru 9). ![]() With some effort, you can do regular addition and subtraction and even multiplication with Roman Numerals. We might assign the name of "tallying" to the most frequent use of the system. Roman numerals were used primarily for counting, mainly taxation, as the ancients had little use for, or understanding of, "calculation" or arithmetic as we know it today. Roman Numerals, as a recognized number representation, was the standard, and as far as we know, the only number system used by the Roman empire and other ancient European civilizations until the Arabic system was introduced. It is mentioned here for information only and is not used in our calculator. This convention is really no longer used in the formal sense of Roman Numerals, as Roman Numerals are seldom utilized for values beyond 4999. Only seven numeral characters (septal?) were used and when a numeral was over barred (in the later years of the use of Roman Numerals), it represented the base character value, multiplied by a thousand. (My wife would have done better with her checkbook then.) If you think adding or subtracting in Roman Numerals is time consuming, awkward and clumsy try multiplication or long division! (It is worse than binary, octal or HEX!) HP and TI were not around to bring out the calculators to do that sort of thing. The concept of negative numbers was not yet around either. The concept of zero did not exist in Europe until after the late 900's AD thus, there was no Roman Numeral symbol for 0 (zero). Roman Numerals, as we know them, was the standard numbering system and method of Arithmetic in Ancient Rome and Europe until about 900 AD, when the Arabic Numbering System, which was originated by the Hindu's, came into use.
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