Do you ever panic when you see the end of the movie scroll and you can't read the Roman Numerals? Yesterday's clock tower in Kingston had Roman Numerals to mark the hours.
Names of monarchs and popes use what is called regnal numbers which are Roman Numerals
Generational suffixes - you could be John Smith VI
Year of production of films - and was the story goes was started by the BBC News "in an attempt to disguise the age of films or television programmes"
Hour marks on time pieces where the traditional IIII rather than IV is prevalent as in our picture yesterday
Buildings - the year of construction
Page numbering of prefaces and introductions
Book Volumes and chapter numbers
Outlines that use numbers to show hierarchical relationships
Occurrences of a recurring grand event - none other than the Olympic Games
Then there are uses within specific disciplines - music, astronomy, chemistry, computing, theology, and so on. It seems Roman Numerals show up in many places.
So we might be presented with the issue of how to represent zero. It does not have its own Roman numeral. And fractions seem to be complicated. The Romans used a duodecimal system for fractions. And then what did they do for large numbers? The system Apostrophes was developed for these. So while the system declined, it has remained with us in quite a few small ways.
Our Autumn pictures come from last year - there's little colour to see this year so far - the wind has swept many leaves away. There was no show of colour as we drove down the road past Morningstar Mill at Decew Falls in St. Catharines. Just down the road is Decew House where Laura Secord ended her 32 km walk from Queenston.
