30 May
2010
30 May
'10
6:03 p.m.
On 31 May 2010 at 1:27, Andrew Burton wrote:
I was thinking that Roman Numerals was the first time
(I knew of)
numbers being represented by letters, and that would have influenced
whoever thought up the sexadecimal system (I can't find any reference
to them on wiki - I'm sure it used to be there). Perhaps I was wrong.
You may be thinking of the way the ancient Greeks represented
numbers. (there were at least two systems--one similar to the Roman
and the other using letters for 1-9, 10-90, 100-900, with special
modifiers for 1000-9000. After that the modifier for a myriad
(10,000, quite literally) was used with each letter.)
Archimedes devised a system where extremely large numbers (10**8,
10**16, etc.) could be represented.
I don't know how the Romans translated his works, particularly his
calculation of the number of grains of sand that would fit into the
universe was around 10**64.
Smart people, those Greeks.
--Chuck