Canadian writer Siobhan Roberts (whom I know from BIRS workshops) has a recent New Yorker article that celebrates the 100th birthday and achievements of Claude Shannon (1916 -2001) -- often referred to as "the father of the information age." Most of the important information in that article I leave for you to read for yourself, but I call to your attention to one of Shannon's accomplishments featured therein -- Claude Shannon built a machine for doing arithmetic with Roman numerals. This connects to poetry via a poem by Ron Padgett, below.
The Roman numeral system has largely been abandoned
because arithmetic is less cumbersome with a place-value system.
Here is a link to a site that exhibits procedures for Roman numeral arithmetic.
The Roman Numerals by Ron Padgett
It must have been hard
for the Romans to multiply
—I don’t mean reproduce,
but to do that computation.
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