The average computer today has more computing power than all the computers used in the entire Apollo program combined. In an age of big data, smartphones, and cloud computing (Webscale is also a thing if you have not heard), it seems we've come a long way in the past few decades.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and self-driving cars are just a handful of some of the more interesting challenges in computer science today. Those problems seem trivial compared to what I'm going to discuss today.

Today, I’m here to solve a real problem in computer science.

Converting Hindu-Arabic numerals (eh, the numbers we use today, e.g. 1,2,3) into Roman Numerals (e.g. I, II, III).

Fun fact: the word calculator comes from the Latin calculus, meaning little stone (Romans counted with pebbles).

Say ave (er, hello) to Calculator Javascriptus Numeralis Romanis

A brief history of Roman numerals

This might come as a surprise but Roman Numerals were invented by the Romans over 2000 years ago and persisted well into the Middle Ages. Roman Numerals were based on 7 principal symbols (whereas Hindu-Arabic numerals use 10). Despite some incredible feats of engineering, the Romans didn’t have the concept of zero.

The replacement of Roman Numerals and the introduction of zero in Europe go hand in hand; both were greatly accelerated by the printing press at the end of the 15th century.

If the Romans did have 0, it would look something like: XMMIIXI

All evidence suggests Hindu-Arabic numerals, including the concept of zero (base 10), originated in India and were spread across the Islamic world through North Africa and eventually into Iberia in the 1000s AD. Moorish scholars, in concert with Jews and Christians, were laying the groundwork for modern mathematics and by extension, science.

Fun fact: historically, there has been incredible inconsistency between the use of the additive (e.g. IIII, VIIII) versus the subtractive (e.g. IV, IX) forms.

Words like Algebra (Arabic for the unification of pieces) and algorithm (a Latinized version of the name al-Khwārizmī, a great Persian mathematician) come from this period. The replacement of Roman Numerals by Hindu-Arabic numerals ignited a revolution in mathematics, which led to a revolution in science, the product of which was nothing short of the modern world. And Webscale.