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Over many years, I asked several people about this but never got a satisfactory answer. My puzzlement comes from the fact that *modern* Latin writes/pronounces numbers in essentially decimal/positional ways. I think it was Tony Hoare (who read “Greats” at Oxford)
who wondered whether the “normal” Roman numerals used a lot of straight lines because they were carved into stone!?
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<div class="">I’d be very interested if you get a solid explanation of how calculations were done</div>
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<div class="">cliff jones</div>
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<div class="">On 2019-02-20, at 20:36, <a href="mailto:herbert.bruderer@bluewin.ch" class="">
herbert.bruderer@bluewin.ch</a> wrote:</div>
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<p class=""><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal" class=""><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;" class=""><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class="">How did the Romans calculate?</font></span></b></p>
<p class=""><span lang="EN-US" style="margin: 0px;" class=""><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" class=""><a href="https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/234881-how-did-the-romans-calculate/fulltext" class=""><font color="#0000ff" class="">https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/234881-how-did-the-romans-calculate/fulltext</font></a> </font></span></p>
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<p class="">Hi all:</p>
<p class="">Does anyone know how the Romans calculated with the Roman numeral system?</p>
<p class="">What is the meaning of the right-most slot of the Roman hand abacus?</p>
<p class="">Do you have Roman hand abaci (original devices or replicas) in your collection? </p>
<p class="">Thank you very much for your help.</p>
<p class="">Best wishes,</p>
<p class="">Herbert Bruderer</p>
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