Andrew Pollack's Blog
Technology, Family, Entertainment, Politics, and Random Noise| Professional Services | Second Signal | Presentations | Andrew's Blog | Support |
HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!
By Andrew Pollack on 11/14/2006 at 11:30 PM EST* Updated: I was shown to be completely wrong here -- but in the interest of honesty in blogging I'm going to leave the post as it was. If you care to see, just view the comments.
---------------------------------------
I'm staying at the Marriott West Philadelphia tonight and tomorrow night. I just was down at the front desk paying for some Doritos (I hadn't met all the parts of my food pyramid yet). The staff were all looking at the clock hanging behind the main lobby counter. Though it had been hanging there for years, it took a 5 year old to notice that the Roman numerals on the clock are WRONG! The number 4 is written on the face of this clock as IIII. -- as I said, nobody had ever noticed before.
Marrriott probably doesn't buy 1 of anything. I would bet that any full service Marriott which had been decorated at about the same time has the exact same clock hanging over the desk in the lobby. Your assignment -- first chance you get -- is to stop at the nearest full service Marriott and check. I'd love to see pictures of these clocks in all the locations.
I'll snap one of the clock in this lobby in the morning, unless the guys in black suits and dark glasses take it away before morning.
re: HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!By Bruce Elgort on 11/14/2006 at 11:48 PM EST
re: HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!By Andrew Pollack on 11/14/2006 at 11:54 PM EST
Fascinating!
... acceptable is even not enoughBy Jens on 11/15/2006 at 05:27 AM EST
in fact IIII is the Usual way Romans have written that number. IV was a
"modern" "shorthand", that was only used in later times and hence was less
found in Roman timeframe. I have no idea, how it was in the middle age.
BTW, same is true for VIIII versus IX
... and if you go on, there are in fact wrong combinations like IC for 99 or IM
for 999, subtracting is only allowed from the next decimal place, so 99 must be
constructing starting at 50 ... LXXXXIX or starting at 90 XCIX .....
"modern" "shorthand", that was only used in later times and hence was less
found in Roman timeframe. I have no idea, how it was in the middle age.
BTW, same is true for VIIII versus IX
... and if you go on, there are in fact wrong combinations like IC for 99 or IM
for 999, subtracting is only allowed from the next decimal place, so 99 must be
constructing starting at 50 ... LXXXXIX or starting at 90 XCIX .....
re: HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!By Rock on 11/17/2006 at 02:56 PM EST
Actually you see that a lot on clock and watch faces using Roman numerals. In
fact, Rolexes with Roman numeral faces also use IIII for four.I also believe it
is to cut down on confusion of four (IV) and six (VI) when looking at them
inverted, as on a clock face.
--Rock
fact, Rolexes with Roman numeral faces also use IIII for four.I also believe it
is to cut down on confusion of four (IV) and six (VI) when looking at them
inverted, as on a clock face.
--Rock
re: HOLY NOT LOOKING, BATMAN! Readers - you have an assignment, QUICK!By John Newland on 11/20/2006 at 02:01 AM EST
Roman Numerals for "4" can be displayed correctly in both forms IV or IIII.
Note following..
"There is a story that a famous clockmaker had constructed a clock for Louis
XIV, king of France. The clockmaker had naturally used IV for four. When the
clock was shown to the king, he remarked that IIII should have been used
instead of IV. When it was explained to him that IV was correct, he still
insisted, so that there was nothing to do but change the clock dial. This
introduced the custom of using IIII for four. This is probably only a story,
however, as IIII occurs long before the time of Louis XIV. And this same story
is also told in connection with other monarchs. There is one reason why IIII is
preferable to IV, and it may have caused the change. On the other side of the
clock dial the VIII is the heaviest number, consisting of four heavy strokes
and one light one, as it is usually made. It would destroy the symmetry to have
the IV with only two heavy strokes on the other side. Thus IIII with four heavy
strokes is much to be preferred. The change may therefore have been made for
reasons of symmetry."
From Time & Timekeepers, W. I. Milham, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947,
p. 196:
Regards from John Newland, Cookernup, Western Australia
Note following..
"There is a story that a famous clockmaker had constructed a clock for Louis
XIV, king of France. The clockmaker had naturally used IV for four. When the
clock was shown to the king, he remarked that IIII should have been used
instead of IV. When it was explained to him that IV was correct, he still
insisted, so that there was nothing to do but change the clock dial. This
introduced the custom of using IIII for four. This is probably only a story,
however, as IIII occurs long before the time of Louis XIV. And this same story
is also told in connection with other monarchs. There is one reason why IIII is
preferable to IV, and it may have caused the change. On the other side of the
clock dial the VIII is the heaviest number, consisting of four heavy strokes
and one light one, as it is usually made. It would destroy the symmetry to have
the IV with only two heavy strokes on the other side. Thus IIII with four heavy
strokes is much to be preferred. The change may therefore have been made for
reasons of symmetry."
From Time & Timekeepers, W. I. Milham, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1947,
p. 196:
Regards from John Newland, Cookernup, Western Australia
Other Recent Stories...
- 01/26/2023Better Running VirtualBox or VMWARE Virtual Machines on Windows 10+ Forgive me, Reader, for I have sinned. I has been nearly 3 years since my last blog entry. The truth is, I haven't had much to say that was worthy of more than a basic social media post -- until today. For my current work, I was assigned a new laptop. It's a real powerhouse machine with 14 processor cores and 64 gigs of ram. It should be perfect for running my development environment in a virtual machine, but it wasn't. VirtualBox was barely starting, and no matter how many features I turned off, it could ......
- 04/04/2020How many Ventilators for the price of those tanks the Pentagon didn't even want?This goes WAY beyond Trump or Obama. This is decades of poor planning and poor use of funds. Certainly it should have been addressed in the Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Reagan administrations -- all of which were well aware of the implications of a pandemic. I want a military prepared to help us, not just hurt other people. As an American I expect that with the ridiculous funding of our military might, we are prepared for damn near everything. Not just killing people and breaking things, but ......
- 01/28/2020Copyright Troll WarningThere's a copyright troll firm that has automated reverse-image searches and goes around looking for any posted images that they can make a quick copyright claim on. This is not quite a scam because it's technically legal, but it's run very much like a scam. This company works with a few "clients" that have vast repositories of copyrighted images. The trolls do a reverse web search on those images looking for hits. When they find one on a site that looks like someone they can scare, they work it like ......
- 03/26/2019Undestanding how OAUTH scopes will bring the concept of APPS to your Domino server
- 02/05/2019Toro Yard Equipment - Not really a premium brand as far as I am concerned
- 10/08/2018Will you be at the NYC Launch Event for HCL Domino v10 -- Find me!
- 09/04/2018With two big projects on hold, I suddenly find myself very available for new short and long term projects.
- 07/13/2018Who is HCL and why is it a good thing that they are now the ones behind Notes and Domino?
- 03/21/2018Domino Apps on IOS is a Game Changer. Quit holding back.
- 02/15/2018Andrew’s Proposed Gun Laws
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals
Says iiii is an acceptable numeral.