Web application - a visual date converter for a large number of chronology systems

Prehistory

For some of us, the passions from childhood pass into adulthood, and this is just my case. Now I am 25, and for the last 17 years I have consciously been engaged in collecting, studying and analyzing coins from different countries of the world. Well, when there is internet; and in the 90s and early zero, information had to be drawn mainly from books.



One of the biggest problems related to my hobby at that time was the definition of the year of minting coins, because in Arab countries there is a calendar, Israel has its own, the Thais have their own, not to mention Japan, China and so on. The difficulty was caused not so much by the conversion process itself, as by recognition of the symbols on the coin. As a result, the notebook with the inventory of the collection remained: "-? - year".



In 2006, Alexander Alexandrovich Schelokov’s book entitled “Fascinating Numismatics” was published. Considering myself to be very well grounded in the technical part and drawing attention to the fact that this book belongs to the category of popular publications, I put it aside. In the late spring of 2009, there was a small repair, and the book caught my eye again - this time I began to read it.



Toward the end, a description of the counting systems of some countries was discovered, that is, just the treasure of knowledge that I was looking for.

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Speaking about some systems, A. A. Schelokov writes: “ It is possible to continue the list further, but everyone will be able to do this, before whom it will be necessary to clarify a specific date. <...> we were convinced that the question of dating is one of the most difficult in numismatics. Many counting systems and calendars in the world. It is impossible to list them all. Yes and no, the author aims to turn a popular book into a comprehensive reference or practical guide. It is much more important, in our opinion, to arouse curiosity, to draw the attention of readers to numismatics and bonistics. "

Creature

Inspired by such words and surprised by the lack of web applications with the appropriate functionality, I decided to create my own, for which I brought my comrade to the work. We can say that it was done in many ways for myself. The name “ Time Machine ” occurred to itself, and after a year of wandering around the test domains, the web application finally found a permanent address on my site, as well as the full name: Creounity Time Machine: dating, history, writing .

What can it do?

• At the time of writing this post, there are 24 chronology systems, most of which are implemented as interactive converters. In each of these converters, two directions are available for converting dates: from the selected system per year according to the Gregorian calendar; and back, to find out how a particular Gregorian year looks in the symbols of the corresponding system of chronology.
• An information block with its description is attached to each system, in which it is told about the origin of this system, the necessary formulas and algorithms for recalculation are given, historical background and other “goodies” are given, which I gathered from a huge number of sources, including through communication with experts on foreign forums.
• The Coin Illustrations tab contains a scroller with color illustrations of 400x400 px coins, also with a brief description below them; You can control the scroller by clicking on the picture, clicking on the links "Forward" / "Back", as well as from the keyboard.

The benefits of Time Machine over other existing date conversion tools.

• the largest selection of chronology systems ( 24 );
• the presence of reverse conversion;
• convenience, clarity and clarity (we made it so that even a non-specialist in the field of numismatics and / or computer interfaces, having opened our web application, already knew how to use it. You just need to enter exactly those date symbols you see on the coin and click "Calculate");
• the presence of different spellings of the date symbols for almost every system (including methods for writing numbers that were used up to 800 years ago);
• availability of detailed descriptive parts;
• and yes, everything is duplicated in English: both the interface and descriptive texts (it took several months to prepare and read the translations);
• the application is updated almost every day: new information is added, corrected censuses, factual errors and other shortcomings are corrected;

How does it work?

Pretty ingenious. The entire math code that converts converters is JS inclusions in php files. It is worth noting that 98% of the code was written specifically for this project. All features, including the scroller engine (not to mention the web application engine itself), were implemented manually (jQuery is used in one and only place where it was necessary to insert a hint with a shadow and a pointing triangle).

Curious moments that could detect

The numbers in various scripts look amazing. Some figures, for example, among Thais or Cambodians resemble the logos of some operating systems and brands. There is no need to go far for examples. See for yourself (in the topic about Linux Mint, I once left a link):





It is clear that all these coincidences are pure coincidence, but all the same ...

Some analytics

According to the design of the numerical system, the systems presented in the project can be divided into 3 categories:

• To record digits of tens, units (optionally hundreds), individual characters are used; the number is formed in a multiplicatively additive way - Ethiopia , Israel , Russia (borrowed from Ancient Greece!), Georgia (used in the 19th century), in a certain sense - Japan and Taiwan ;
• Decimal system; everything is “like ours”, only its figures are the majority of the remaining systems (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and others);
• Separately, there are Roman numerals .

Examples of writing numbers (not necessarily years!) . Attention: if you do not have some fonts installed, or if you read this from a mobile device, then instead of a number of characters you may have small squares displayed, or nothing at all:

• Japan. 569 = 五百 六 十九 (5 * 100 + 6 * 10 + 9);
• Ethiopia. 2513 = ፳፭፻፲፫ ((20 + 5) * 100 + 10 + 3);
• Georgia. 1834 = (1000 + 800 + 30 + 4);
• Israel. 5751 = ה'תשנ"א (if you look from left to right: 1 + 50 + 300 + 400 + 1000 * 5) [in Hebrew, as in Arabic, reading and writing are done from right to left];
• Russia 1714 = ҂AѰDI (1000 * 1 + 700 + 4 + 10);
• Tibet. 1984 = ༡༩༨༤ (1984, it is);

In Chinese, the perception of large numbers is special, and they are recorded somewhat unusual. Look at this:



Before you is a banknote of 50,000,000 dollars of the so-called “Hell Bank Note”. The Chinese burn such special notes to “transfer” the amount indicated on the bill to their dead relatives. 50 million are written like this (from right to left): “仟 伍”, that is, we have the following: 5 * 1'000 * 10'000 (five thousand ten-thousand meters). The Chinese have 2 ways of writing numbers: simplified and traditional (the latter is distinguished by more clever hieroglyphs). On the banknote, the traditional entry form is used.



By the principle of counting years (in other words, the choice of a zero-point era) calendars / era can be divided into the following subcategories:

1. The countdown is based on the date associated with an important religious event (the Gregorian calendar we are used to, the lunar Hijra (used in Arab countries), the Buddhist era (modern Thailand, Cambodia)). Important religious events are, respectively, the Nativity of Christ, the relocation of the Prophet Muhammad and the first followers of Islam from Mecca to Medina, and, finally, the death (going to Nirvana?) Of the Buddha.
2. The counting is conducted from a certain important event in the past of the nation (independence, victory over Arag, foundation of the capital, etc.) - the era of Saka (Nepal), the era of Bikram Samvat (Nepal), the era of Nepal Samvat (Nepal), the era of Chula-Sakarat (Myanmar), Mingo Era (Taiwan), Juche Era (DPRK), etc.
3. The countdown is from the date of performance on the throne of the new emperor; the emperor is dying - a new era is coming ( Japan , Korea (empire), Tibet (during the rule of the Chinese emperors at the end of the XVIII – mid XIX centuries)).
4. Cyclic calendar ( China , Tibet ). The cycle lasts 60 years, then everything repeats again.

It is worth noting that in Russia to Peter (when the years were counted "from the creation of the world"), and also nowadays in Israel, it is considered common practice to lower the number of thousands in the recording and pronunciation of the year.

One more thing ...

There are actually several such things in “Time Machine”, here are the most important ones:

• notes addressed to numismatists (7 pcs., they are available in the menu, under all systems of chronology);
• a collection of handwritten samples of written language of the peoples of the world , with a number of exhibits accompanied by audio versions of written sentences, even a song and a photo in Cuba (if you have friends from countries where I don't have samples, send me, I will be glad to post it! (not friends, but handwritten writing samples)) ;
• the subsection “Teleport” , devoted to foreign travels of me and my friends (there are few stories, but we are working on it!). All stories are accompanied by colorful photos. Want to send a story about your trip to a distant country? Send, I will also be very happy to publish.

And ... where would we be without an accordion some statistics?

The earliest delivered meter is Google Analytics. Data is measured from June 16, 2010. During this time (as of the date of publication of this article), “The Time Machine” was used by visitors from 131 countries, which I consider to be a quite good indicator. In many ways, this was possible due to the fact that I made a translation and laid out the English version of the project.



Incidentally, in just a year and a half of its existence, “ Creounity Time Machine ” has become the standard among the tools for determining monetary dates, in many cases replacing Krause's fat directories, on the initial pages of which are some systems. And this is not only in Russia, but also in the United States and in the countries of Europe. This is a direct manifestation of my philosophy, namely: " Even with a narrow target audience, we must strive to be as large as possible ."



The average attendance of the last few months ranges from 150 to 190 visits per day, with 500-700 pages viewed . A bit of visualization:







Peaks correspond to those days when very much in a subject it was possible to tell somewhere about the project.



Coverage by country:







(132 = 131 + "not set")



Top ten most visited countries : Russia, Ukraine, USA, Belarus, Portugal, Kazakhstan, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom, India.



Ten of the most visited cities in Russia : Samara, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Belgorod, Tyumen.



Not a penny was spent on advertising and promotion of the project. All I did was tell about the “Time Machine” on thematic forums of numismatists and treasure hunters, and then popular rumor did its good deed.



Advertising in the project itself is also never there, but ... →

To infinity ... and beyond!

→ ... but I think that it is necessary to write applications for iOS and Android, as well as for Mac OS X, while setting reasonable but not the lowest prices on them (thematic users asked - they say, they would gladly buy and use, especially As for the desktop version for Mac, the iPhone and iPad is a trend, and I also don’t need to go past it, too). In this regard, I invite developers to cooperate. I will provide the necessary raw materials.



If something is wrong with your browser, please let me know in the comments. All bugs will get to the todo-list for fix and will be fixed.