Pride

Today we will all be fortunate enough to experience a ‘once in a lifetime event’. At one point today, around midday, clocks and calendars will give a combined consecutive numerical reading of 12:34:56 07/08/09 – Which is believed to only occur once every 100 years.

Thus, at 34 minutes and 56 seconds past 12:00 hours (12 pm), on Friday the 7th of August 2009, we will experience a centennial moment in time in which the first zeroless pandigital number can be used to precisely pinpoint the exact date and time.

In layman’s terms: all nine numerical digits, which hold a value greater than zero and which make up all arithmetic equations, will present themselves at a single point in time, in numerical order from smallest to largest, via the most well known sequence of numbers in existence: 123456789.

12:34:56 07/08/09

Personally I find this to be incredibly interesting. Particularly because I do have an inclination and mild obsession with numerical sequences and geometric symmetry. Consequently, I found a few interesting facts and figures concerning this first zeroless pandigital numbered sequence. For those who do not know, a pandigital number is in fact “an integer that in a given base, has among its significant digits, each digit used in the base at least once” (Wikipedia.com, 2009).

In most instances, the number ‘777’ is considered to be one of luck. It is also considered to be a symbol of absolute perfection. As it so happens, this number has an evenly symmetrical number of solutions, in both descending and ascending order, using the numbers 123456789 and by only ‘adding’ and ‘subtracting’. The solutions are (Martin Gardner, 02 June 2009):

AscendingDescending

– 12 – 3 + 4 + 5 – 6 + 789 = 777 – 9 – 8 + 765 – 4 + 32 + 1 = 777

– 12 + 3 – 4 – 5 + 6 + 789 = 777 98 + 7 + 654 – 3 + 21 = 777

Have you ever wondered what it would look like to display all the numbers from 1 through to 9 on an abacus? Well, here is your answer:

How about displaying this ascending zeroless pandigital sequence in Roman numerals? Here we go:

About me

Hi, I'm Hans. A Ludologist by education; writer, marketer and ecommerce curator by trade; foodie by nature; and a tech, gadget and gamer geek in my spare time. This blog is where I share my personal thoughts on almost everything and anything.