Roman Numerals

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Roman numerals – numbers used by the ancient Romans. They appeared in the sixth century BC in the Etruscans. This tribe lived in the North-West of the Apennine Peninsula. Perhaps they borrowed some of the signs from the protocelts.

These elements represent a nonpositional numeral system. In such systems the value of a figure does not depend on its position in the numeral. The Roman numeral X means ten and it also means ten in the number XII and in the number CX. The system we use is positional. In the figure 90 nine means ninety, and in 951 – nine hundred.

The numbers are made up from Roman numerals in the following way. The smaller figure to the right of the larger one is added to it, and the one to the left is subtracted. At the same time the figure should not be repeated more than three times in a row. VIII (5+1+1+1) = 8. XVI (10+5+1) = 16. XIV(10+(5-1)) = 14.

Roman numerals are in the section of the Number form. There you can find their old form of writing. Now fifty looks like the Latin letter I. But once it was recorded so .

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