Solar Numbers...a Question

[Qualia]

I was chatting with David (the Bears Fan) the other day, admiring his sketches and detailed project and kindly he supplied me with a link, explaining the Zurich Number System.

I noticed that the white-light image of the sun in the supplied link to the right had numbers on it all starting with 00 and was wondering if anyone knew what they were, how they are arrived at and who does that kind of cataloguing system? I was also wondering that if I see a given sunspot how could I tell what 'number' it was?

Thank you for your time.

[MJWales]

Current sunspot numbers for both Earth side and far side of the Sun can be viewed here:- http://www.raben.com/maps

A handy resource.

[Bizibilder]

They started at an arbitrary 000001 (can't remember the date offhand) and have been counting up ever since.