Wednesday, August 20, 2008

UCL building Roman Numeral blunder...

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have posted anything here, I have been a busy man, I launched my website (which I am still working on the interface but has somework on display)among other things I had the chance to take part in a user review with What Digital Camera magazine and a "On Assignment" section for Amateur Photographer Magazine.

Anyway, I was out with my camera today and I was feeling a bit uninspired so I passed by the UCL building behind Warren Street and took a shot of the wrong Roman numerals in one of the buildings as I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that (as I work in that area for a while I was always amazed nobody has said or done anything about it) and a bit shocked that an educational institution like UCL could make such a blunder.


(click to enlarge)

Roman numerals have a rule that does not allow the use of the same numeral more than three times. Frankly I don't know what date/year they were trying to inscribe but if it was 1905 the correct form would have been MCMV, if 2005 MMV. In the case that the date they wanted to inscribe is 1905, the C (100) before the M (1000) is used to denote subtraction of 100 from 1000 (making it 900).

Better change that quick as it won't do any favours to UCL to have that there for any longer.



Until next time,


Luis

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals.

"The subtractive notation (which uses IV instead of IIII) has become
universally used only in modern times [...] on some buildings it is
possible to see MDCCCCX, for example, representing 1910 instead of MCMX - notably Admiralty Arch in London."

Luis Rubim (aka Dr. Uberfunk) said...

Thank you for your clarification, I wasn't aware that there was a modernisation of the system.