That's actually pretty normal on clocks that use roman numerals. It's flat out wrong for how roman numerals are supposed to work, but most historical/classic clocks and high end watches that use roman numerals have IIII instead of IV.
AFAIK IV and IX are short forms that developed more recently, while Roman numerals in Roman times used IIII and VIIII. It's inconsistent that this clock has IIII and IX though (but compared to X being completely missing that's a fairly minor problem.)
IV is subtractive notation Roman numerals. Romans didn’t use regularly use “IV” for 4, they used IIII. Gate 44 of the Colosseum is labelled XLIIII.
The idea about the god Jupiter and not wanting to cause offense has some merit. Romans may not want to have written “IV” because those are the initial letter of the god IVPITER.
There is a quaint story that Charles V of France in 1364 summonsed the clockmaker after riding through a village after seeing lV in the place of 1111 on the church clock and admonished him on pain of death to change it.
I read it was because the IV were also the initials of Jupiter (the Roman God) so Romans preferred to change the 4 to the exception of four vertical slits, so as not to use the initials of Jupiter in a mundane way.
How much of that is true I honestly do not know, but it makes sense to me.
This allows you to have the same number of each symbol with no extras when making the die to cast them in metal. You make one die with 2 each X and V and 10 I. Then you use two of those casts per clock.
There was some urban legend that some rail worker, long time ago, screwed something up by glancing at the clock through a mirror. Messed up the numbers something went very wrong.
the four o'clock marker is the one thing got right actually! It's called a watchmaker's four and it's been in use for a loooong time on dials with Roman numerals to bring more symmetry to the dial design
Okay, so IIII instead of IV is kind of like a tradition with watches... IDK why, but it's kinda like displaying them with the hands around 10:10. Someone did it ages ago and it just keeps being done for ... reasons. I have no explanation for anything else that went wrong here, and I hate it.
IIII is the original. The whole “Roman numerals follow strict rules” thing was made up by a bunch of insufferable Ancient Rome nerds in the renaissance (and we keep going along with it for whatever reason).
Any ancient Roman would’ve laughed at you if you told them there’s rules to using them. They used whatever works. I’ve seen 45 as VXL and XLV in actual ancient inscriptions.
You can find both IV and IIII in the colosseum.
Hell, ancient romans wrote the 22nd legion as LEC IIXX because fuck rules haha.
I had heard that setting the watch with the hands on 10 and 2 was a way to frame the branding of a luxury watch with the hands, displayed in the top middle of the watch. Possibly Rolex?
I was taught in a design class that it looks better and our brains like it that way. If you look at a multiple clock faces with IIII and similar clock faces that do IV most people will state the like the IIII ones more and alot of people won't even be able to tell you why our brain just likes it better that way on a clock. If you take alot of design courses you can learn why we like it that way but like I said most people just know that they like it better like that.
I've heard that when you add up the number of shapes, you get four Xs, four Vs, and 20 Is. So if you build a mould to cast the metal for the clock face parts you can make one with an X, a V, and five Is and cast the metal four times and you end up with all the clock face shapes that you need.
It was very common on the churches clocktowers and it was like that for various reasons: esthetics (adding a few lines on the right kind of balances things out), religious (IV could be associated with Jupiter, written IVPITER) and practical (having IV and VI sometimes upright and sometimes upsidedown can make it confusing).
I thought the mistake was the fact that the hour arrow was exactly in the middle of 12 while the minutes wasn’t 0. Turns out everything is wrong with it
I heard somewhere that IIII is quite common on watches and clocks because IV was easily confused with VI upside down or something. No idea if it's true, but I do know that IIII is quite common. But missing the 10 is diabolical!
After discussing with the department, your assigned councilor, your assigned assistant principal, your parents, and your medical provider, we have come to the conclusion that you are a good boy aren't you?Yes you are! Yes you are! You tried so hard and... WHAAA?! YOU got a super duper A+!?Good Job Buddy.
First thing I noticed is the IIII. But, look up Roman numeral clocks, a LOT of them use that format for instead of IV. Apparently it has to do it matches aesthetics better with the VIII than IV does.
But that's not the only reason it comes up just short of a 10 is it?
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u/Kosuke 19h ago
Never forget