Movie copyrights - roman numerals

[Mike Croaro]

Why don't studios use Roman Numerals for movie copyrights anymore?

[Harold Hallikainen]

And why did they in the first place?

[Bobby Henderson]

The Roman numerals thing is all a style thing. Lots of old statues and buildings had chiseled inscriptions using Roman numerals. Historically, movie studios have tried very hard to elevate the craft via marketing into being just as much an art form as something you would see in a museum. It's evident in a lot of old studio logos and even the designs of studio entrances. The use of Roman numerals is another added visual touch along those lines.

The legal industry is another one that likes those Roman numerals, for obvious pretentious reasons.

Lately the Roman numerals have disappeared out of use because a really short Roman numeral, such as the one for the year 2000, "MM" doesn't look very cool at all and it even looks unintentionally funny. Cue the Crash Test Dummies song. A Roman numeral such as "MCMLXXXIV" looks more cool than "MMXXI." Yeah, our current year looks like the word "maxi" -as in maxi-pad. Bloody awful.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I still remember some copyright banners in the form of © MM <Insert company here>, both on film and on TV, but it looks like it got out of fashion right about that time. Maybe because it didn't look all that fashionable anymore and maybe because it was now too easy to decode:

Film moguls thought Roman numerals looked classier but they also had a business reason. The public liked to think they were watching new material, not some film which had been made years before .In fact they often were seeing just that.Using Roman numerals meant that they'd have to be very good at classics and very quick, to translate the date into a form they'd recognise, all in the brief time it was on the screen.Of course they couldn't, so they didn't know the date.However, the makers' own legal requirements for copyright date etc were duly satisfied by the Roman numbers.

Source

[Allan Young]

FWIW, the BBC not only still mandate the use of Roman numerals, they also demand that the corporate font is used...

The year of the first transmission in Roman Numerals in the corporate typeface (BBC Reith)

https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/commissi...dependents.pdf

[Leo Enticknap]

If it was Lord Reith who first imposed that rule, that would explain a lot. He was anxious to portray the BBC as a highbrow, nonpolitical, "public service" (I use that term in quotations, because a lot of the public didn't want it then, and still don't now) broadcaster, and to ensure that commercial radio and television never became established in the UK. He didn't entirely win that fight (though commercial broadcasting in the UK is far more heavily regulated and restricted than it is in most other countries, apart from dictatorships), but projecting an image of elitism, e.g. through the use of dates in Roman numerals, was part and parcel of his strategy. See the movie Radio Parade of 1935 for Will Hay playing a hilarious send-up of Reith, in which he plays the Director-General of the "NBG" (supposedly National Broadcasting Group, but in interwar British slang, the initials were understood to mean no bloody good - the precursor of today's NFG).

[Jim Cassedy]

I learned Roman numerals as a kid, because we had a large antique clock that belonged to my grandparents which had Roman numerals on the face. Once I knew the basics, I became quite good at decoding those copyright dates. I once had a supposed "film expert" tell me that Roman numerals were put on films so that when people watched them on TV, they wouldn't be aware they were watching a really old movie. This, of course, makes no sense, since studios were using Roman numerals on films long before TV became a reality. A friend has similar experiences and we often use R-n's when we text each other. I used to have a NIXIE tube digital clock and you could switch the output to display the time in Roman numerals. In the 1980's I also recall seeing a pocket calculator that could do calculations in R-n's. (And if you want to have math-geeky fun, there are several online calculators that will do the same thing)

[Frank Cox]

I always thought these look cool

https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Power...dp/B000YHO28U/

[Leo Enticknap]

As far as I'm aware, the Romans did not produce any top rank mathematicians. Engineers, politicians, writers, architects, absolutely, but I can't think of any mathematicians. The Greeks, on the other hand, produced Pythagoras, Euclid ... you name 'em. One has to wonder if the Romans' method of recording numbers worked for everyday purposes, but held them back when it came to higher level stuff.

[Jim Cassedy]

Amusing Roman numeral anecdote: I used to know a guy whose legal name was 'Charles Thorp, the 4th" , which he would write and sign his name as "Charles Thorp IV" - - I saw a pile of his junk mail once, and almost all of it was addressed to "Charles Thorpiv"

[Kenneth Wuepper]

His nick name must have been "Quad"

[Allan Young]

If it was Lord Reith who first imposed that rule, that would explain a lot. He was anxious to portray the BBC as a highbrow, nonpolitical, "public service"

Apparently not - the copyright date on BBC programmes was only introduced in the early 1970s. In fact, it was initially in Arabic numerals before switching to Roman a few years later.

[Bobby Henderson]

I learned Roman numerals as a kid, because we had a large antique clock that belonged to my grandparents which had Roman numerals on the face.

When I was a kid I went through a phase where I was interested in Roman numerals, learning all the rules in how they worked. Today I have a bit of a cheat. A commercial type family I use pretty frequently called Vito has a pretty large OpenType character set, including Roman numerals as an alternative to regular numerals. I'm pretty sure it's the only type family I've encountered that can generate such a thing. Just type out a number in the normal manner, then select it and apply the Roman numerals character set.

[Leo Enticknap]

Apparently not - the copyright date on BBC programmes was only introduced in the early 1970s.

Oh well - that buggers that theory!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I always thought these look cool

https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Power...dp/B000YHO28U/

Next up: Movie copyrights in barcode?