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 Replies: 20 / Views: 4,837 |
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Moderator
 Australia
16832 Posts |
Top one: not much to do there except type in the entire Latin phrases into Google. The AE ligature I would put in as AE, and leave out the full stops. I'd try it with quotes (exact phrase matching - which didn't work too well) and without quotes (which did work - it's an American revolutionary medal). But failing that, I would try to find specific names, dates, etc and enter them into Wikipedia. In this case, "Stony Pt" shows up several locales by that name, and "1779" indicates to me it's likely to be a reference to the American Revolutionary war; sure enough, there's a Battle of Stony Point listed there on Wikipedia that occurred on that date. I'd then check Wikipedia to find out which side won that battle (The Americans won it; if the Brits had won it, this would probably be a British medal).
Bottom one: Try the Latin phrases again. If a literal transcription doesn't help, try substituting the "V"s with "U"s. In this case, the literal words do help - a CoinArchives hit. The source auction listing is in Italian, so ram the text through Google Translate to find out the story behind this piece: an Italian religious medal.
CoinArchives used to be for me a major source of info on medals, mediaeval coins, etc.. But now that they charge a humongous fee to access their old database, I rarely use it anymore, and no longer expect it to be helpful like I once did.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
588 Posts |
So what is that bottom coin, its very interesting.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1523 Posts |
Google coin with porus and jesus on a cross for bottom coin and virtutis premium for the first.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
2669 Posts |
:::adds "ram the text through Google Translate" to growing list::: Coin Archives used to be a treasure trove of information.. I'm not sure what their reasoning was behind such HUGE fees but they cut most people out when they did that. Podoprigora, info and picture for the 2nd coin is from this document : http://www.archive.org/details/meda...ni00lawriala |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
The main point of this site is to tell you what things like PORVS CONSILII FILIVS might stand for or mean. But first you gotta be able to find the coin itself when searching.
Have you ever thought "I wish this search engine could ________" or "I should be able to search by _______"? What would it be?
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3831 Posts |
Just post it in a coin forum like here and chances are someone here knows the answer  My partial coin collection http://www.omnicoin.com/collection/gxseriesMy numismatics articles and collection: http://www.gxseries.com/numis/numis_index.htmRegularly updated at least once a month. |
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Moderator
Australia
16832 Posts |
Quote:
Coin Archives used to be a treasure trove of information.. I'm not sure what their reasoning was behind such HUGE fees but they cut most people out when they did that. As I understand it, "cutting most people out" was the reason. Some of the contributors of the information on the site - specifically, some of the photographers that work for the auction houses - were kicking up a stink that having their pics copied onto a free general-access website wasn't part of the deal they signed with the auction house. The money raised (assuming there actually are people that pay those exorbitant fees) goes mostly toward copyright fees to keep those contributors happy. Quote:
The main point of this site is to tell you what things like PORVS CONSILII FILIVS might stand for or mean. Latin seems to be one of the trickiest languages for an automatic translator to handle - I've never found one that worked well, despite there being the demand for it. It doesn;t help that most Latin inscriptions on coins are abbreviated. All the easily findable sites are those with real-world Latin-speaking human translators behind them - "submit the text, and we'll look at it and translate it for you". You'd probably need a huge database of inscriptions and meanings, kind of like what you find at the back of the 1600's and 1700's Krauses. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
Quote:
The money raised (assuming there actually are people that pay those exorbitant fees) goes mostly toward copyright fees to keep those contributors happy. Wow.. you would think at least a few would think of it as free advertising. Quote:
Latin seems to be one of the trickiest languages for an automatic translator to handle - I've never found one that worked well, despite there being the demand for it. It doesn;t help that most Latin inscriptions on coins are abbreviated. And that's the main trouble - the abbreviations. Especially in different eras or countries, the same one can be different things, or the one thing will be abbreviated different ways. Some medals just plain created their own abbreviations depending on available space.. etc. Quote:
You'd probably need a huge database of inscriptions and meanings, kind of like what you find at the back of the 1600's and 1700's Krauses. That's pretty much what I'm working on.. covering not only coins, but medals, tokens, jettons, and anything else you can find remotely related. I'm not the only one that's going to be filling it, though (hopefully!) - I'm just building the foundation and starting off the main dataset. So hopefully at some point, someone will be looking for what D G REX BRIT stands for and means, and be able to find D[ei] G[ratia] (By the grace of God) REX (King) BRIT (of Britain), what coin(s) the abbreviation(s) are on, and so on. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that this will be a lifelong endeavor, as it will never be complete, but that's ok, too  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2838 Posts |
That sounds like a huge project if you intend to use / update your own data tables with all the info for known coins / medals etc!
Could you not just write a very clever search engine designed specifically to search for coins etc in know catalogues and on larger websites for specific refs to what is input?
I've just read the above a few times and even though I wrote it its not too clear! - will try to explain.
Its usually possible to find a ref to any coin / medal on the net using a good search engine - however this is sometimes very time consuming as you have to keep trying slightly different info until you give up or get the result you want.
Could you write a search program with multiple inputs eg
Obverse Legend:
Obverse Picture:
Reverse Legend:
Reverse Picture:
Date:
Material:
The program then searches all inputs and slight variations of inputs and returns hits ordered by the most matching inputs?
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
2838 Posts |
The ultimate search facility would be the ability to upload a picture and have a progam either attempt to ID it or look for similar pictures on the web.
I know Google and MS are experimenting with this now but I think the technology is a good 10 years away yet. A few systems are now able to ID famous landmarks and logos but thats about it!
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New Member
Paraguay
19 Posts |
Yes, Google is doing a lot of work on that technology, for their Android phones.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
Quote:
Could you write a search program with multiple inputs eg
Obverse Legend:
Obverse Picture:
Reverse Legend:
Reverse Picture:
Date:
Material:
The program then searches all inputs and slight variations of inputs and returns hits ordered by the most matching inputs? Yes.. and I probably will try something like that if there is no available data for a certain motto or inscription. Kind of like "if all else fails, try this" and then save the results if something comes back with good information (as chosen by the searcher). The only problem is that abbreviation/motto translations are hard to find - which is why this is being built. It will definitely be a huge project, but I won't be the only one adding data. Everyone who has even ONE they know the meaning of will be invited to contribute their knowledge! Quote:
The ultimate search facility would be the ability to upload a picture and have a progam either attempt to ID it or look for similar pictures on the web. With ICR ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intell..._recognition ) anything could be possible  I've been doing research into that exact thing for both ends of the problem: for the end user to search, and for people adding data: it would be awesome to just upload a picture of a coin and it would extract the inscription and characteristics (any available, anyway) automagically. Foxit already has the ability to read text from jpg images (Evernote uses their technology for handwriting recognition). I'm checking into their capabilities, along with other companies. From another viewpoint.. coins could be their own language.. so if you turned them into a (really large) alphabet and/or font, it would be a piece of cake to figure out what "letter" that thing is. In the meantime, I had a slightly different one planned. Similar though.. you design the coin onscreen and it identifies/translates. Choose a shape, place elements, text (choices of languages via images if needed), etc, and it searches known combinations of same. The result of the 'designing' is saved as an image file along with its given parameters and associated matches to make the engine 'learn'. A ways off, as I want to get the site done first so whoever wants to can add their coins and translations. Keep the ideas comin'... One idea leads to another |
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Moderator
United States
188727 Posts |
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Yes, Google is doing a lot of work on that technology, for their Android phones. Google Goggles. I have it on my Droid. It does pretty good with logos; I scanned the sign on our building (our corporate logo) and it pulled up our profile on Google. It does pretty good with famous people; I scanned the portrait of Jackson on the twenty dollar FRN and it pulled up a bunch of links about Jackson. But I have yet to get it to identify a single coin.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
Very nice! Dang Droids get ALL the fun. Thanks for the link.. I'll keep an eye on that one, it looks promising  |
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Posted 02/20/2010 3:52 pm
