Historical Number Systems
Roman Numerals is a positional numbering system using letters. There is no symbol for zero in Roman, so the Nerd Clock Widget uses an Arabic zero to fill in the space when needed. Values are arranged in highest value symbol on left to lowest on right. The Nerd Clock Widget uses these symbols: I (1), V (5), X (10), L (50). Roman numbering allows a single character that has a value less than the current character to the left of it, which means that it's value is subtracted from the higher value character. Counting to ten in Roman Numerals would be I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X. See Roman Numerals for more details.
Olmec is a numbering system used by the ancient Mayans. It is a base 20 system using symbols that represent the values 0-19. The zero symbol is represented by a stone or nut symbol. Dots in symbols represents ones and bars represents fives. See Mayan Numerals for more details.
Hieroglyphics were symbols used by the Egyptians. The numbers are base 10 (decimal) system using three symbols. The ones place uses symbols that are like the letter "I". The tens place symbol looks like an upside-down "U". The NFR symbol for beauty was used to fill an empty place, and represent a zero. See Egyptian Numbers for more details.
Cuneiform are characters that were formed in clay using a stylus with a triangular tip. This system was used by the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians. A blank space was used for zero. Nerd Clock Widget represents zero this way. It is also a base 10 (decimal) system. In the ones place, the stylus was pressed into the clay so the triangles pointed down for each one, from one to nine triangles in that position. The tens place has the triangles pressed pointing to the right. Nerd Clock Widget uses the tens place to represent up to 50. See Babylonian Numerals for more details.
Modern Number Systems
Modern systems came about due to the information revolution over that past several decades. With the advent of computers and calculating machines, several different numbering bases were used to represent data, such as Binary (base 2), Octal (base 8) and Hexadecimal (base 16). Nerd Clock Widget supports and will display them for those nerdy and geeky individuals who love computers. See Number Systems in Computers for more details and how to read these formats.
The standard resistor color code can be found by a simple search on the Internet using your favorite search engine. It was very common for resistors down to about 1/8th watt, but is now losing favor since most circuits are using surface mount chip resistors that are too small for color bands.
The standard resistor color code can be found by a simple search on the Internet using your favorite search engine. It was very common for resistors down to about 1/8th watt, but is now losing favor since most circuits are using surface mount chip resistors that are too small for color bands.