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In today's modern notation it is written as: MCMLXXIX

But in the times of the Romans themselves they would have probably calculated 1979 on a abacus counting device as MDCCCCLXXVIIII and by adding 21 to the right side and subtracting 21 from the left side, simply wrote it out as IXXMM (-21+2000 = 1979).

In the same way that 89.5 and 79.5 can be written out as SXC and SXXC respectively as described in his book "History of Mathematics volume II" by David Eugene Smith first published in 1925.

Roman numerals: M=1000, D=500, C=100, L=50, X=10, V=5, I=1 and S=1/2

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15y ago

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