"Cistercian Numbers" are incredibly cool

It's a rare numeric system designed by 13th century monks

Each number is a based on a single vertical stick, with patterns you draw in all four quadrants off it -- top right, top left, bottom right, bottom left

A single glyph can represent a number from 1 to 9,999

It's in my recent weekly "Linkfest" newsletter, here: https://buttondown.email/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-3-cisterian-numbers-robots-that-hug-and/

Want to subscribe? Pay-what-you-want here: https://buttondown.email/clivethompson

I call it "The opposite of doomscrolling"

@clive It kind of reminds me a bit of Pitman's shorthand...

@clive Tangential: I teach this to every nine-year old I get near: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_binary

@clive big Riven energy

@clive In college I created a similar-looking runic alphabet to take notes in class. It soon got sophisticated as I not only had symbols for a-z and 0-9, but I created symbols for common word endings like “ing” and made single symbols for letter combos like “st” and “br” etc. I supose it was a kind of shorthand but man did it work. I could take notes in class and keep right up with the teacher. Filled notebooks with this stuff. Other students would give me “wtf” looks when they saw my notes lol!

Makers of obscure clocks, Clive offers up ideas for your next project. Cistercian Numbers give off a serious mystical, elvish vibe. Like a clock Gandalf would have in his den.

@clive Interesting. It looks like the source of inspiration for the glyphs they used in the videogame Tunic last year.

@clive I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out the Miller brothers used this as their inspiration for the D'Ni alphabet/numerals in Riven/Myst.

@clive

@clive Something very dissatisfying about all the 6s for me.

@clive very interesting👍

@clive how do they represent beyond that

@clive That is up with the COOLEST darn things I’ve ever seen!! Secret code nerd from waaaay back. I’ve been writing in QuikScript (a derivative of George Bernard Shaw’s Shavian) for 40 years, and I’m stoked to *finally* have a number system to add to that. Incredible!
I agree with the commenter who suggested a weighted version for people with #dyslexia. It’s a great idea, and won’t be hard to do.

⬆️ @clive
Cistertian numbers?

oddly compelling! 👍

Up next: a dyslexic-friendly version
(Where left and right are not perfect mirror images, and the whole thing is visually weighted so it doesn't 'spin'? ;-> )

@clive

https://extkits.co.uk/product/cypher-of-the-monks-clock/

@clive that last line means the Predator's bomb is about to go off

@clive this is fascinating. So, 1111 would look like a capital I in a serif font.

@clive Those monks must have had a lot of time in their hands coming up with this stuff 🤣

I’ve been using these for note-taking at work for about two years now. I think I discovered them by accident on Wikipedia, and spent a few hours practicing and learning them.

They’re really useful for writing down things that are sensitive (phone numbers, account numbers) that I need to refer to but wouldn’t want someone passing by, or sitting opposite me, to be able to read at a glance.

@clive oh, interesting system! But no zero? Nothing did not exist in their world?

@clive This is the coolest thing I have seen so far in 2023.

@Judeet88

Yes!

My sister, who's 8 years older than me, learned Pitman when was training in "secretarial sciences" at Ryerson college in Toronto back in the early 80s

She still knows it today

@guncelawits

Ahhh very cool!

@maxeddy

Very much so

@brianstorms

That is incredibly cool!

I knew a few other nerds who created their own custom shorthand systems -- they looked rad

@isaaccp

Oh right on!

It made me think of runes you'd see on crashed UFOs, yeah

@guncelawits @clive check out the origin of sexagesimal (counting to 60 on the hands):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal

@cyhwuhx

Neither would I

Those guys were erudite and did their research

@clive @isaaccp I’ve heard Korean is a modern logical writing as well. It’s interesting how easy writing letters and numbers could have been if we were able to invent new ones. I wonder how negative numbers would be shown. I would have preferred the four locations in an (anti)clockwise way. Also, grouping by four digits is not helping SI prefixes.

@tymwol

lololol

@eleanor

Those jesuits were crafty

@Alby

yeah, that does sort of dominate, that part of the glyphs, doesn't it

@stef193

🤘 🤖

@vegetablegremlin

Not sure! Maybe they don't? Maybe they didn't really need to think often in numbers beyond that?

@ellane

Ooooo that's awesome!!

You will dig this, which @Extelec just showed me: https://extkits.co.uk/product/cypher-of-the-monks-clock/

I’d never heard of Quikscript until seeing your post. Any suggestions on a good way to learn it? What’s the learning time/difficulty like compared with shorthand?

I’ve been meaning to learn Teeline shorthand forever but I’ve never got past the “buying a few second-hand books and thinking about it” stage; Quikscript may be a better/easier option.

@deborahh

Yes, totally

@Extelec

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@PizzaDemon

RUN

@homelessjun

yesss

@macdarabutler

lol yes

@Tbeauchamp

Woo!

@hansup

Good question! Possibly not. In the medieval period, most Christian thinkers were still quite unsettled by zero -- and its related mathematical concept, infinity -- since the concepts of nothingness and infinity seemed to impinge, dangerously, on God's terrain

It's why medieval math boomed in Islamic and indian areas, but not in christian ones

So they may have been avoiding zero

Nice short essay on it https://cambriamathtutors.com/zero-christianity/

@cgseife's book "Zero" is a *fab* exploration of this

@clive I deeply regret not keeping up with mine...I used to be really good and could even use it for taking down French! I mostly used it in lectures and was secretary at a university sit-in as I could also touchtype really fast and accurately (well before computers!).

@rob_fulwell @guncelawits

aha, very cool!

@chexum @isaaccp

I am ignorant of how Korean works -- would love to learn more

@Judeet88

It's still incredibly useful

@isaaccp @clive I only remember seeing it mentioned somewhere, but for a writing system invented in the 1400s, where a character represents a whole syllable, it’s supposed to be very easy to learn:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul

@clive The Rosicrucians used to use this in their promotional pamphlets way back in the day. I never knew the origin of the system and at that time (when I was 12 - 15) thought that they’d invented the system 😛 Good to know the origins at last …

@f

Aha, didn't know that!

@clive Fifteen-year old (or however young I was) me really wanted to join the Rosicrucians to learn all the mysteries of the world ... Fortunately, I didn't have the money (especially given that the fee was in US dollars and I was in Sri Lanka where the exchange rate was at least Rs. 70 = 1 USD at that time). So I was spared that ...

Thank you for illuminating at least one mystery from that time period 🙂

@f

🤘