Roman Numeral FOUR and the Clock

Last week in our homeschool we introduced Roman Numerals.  I expected it to be a little difficult to teach/learn but Addie grasped it quickly just as she has everything else to date.  She in fact loved it.  Later that day we were shopping wall hangings at Target to hang in Daddy's office and as we were checking out the clocks Addie noticed one that looked like this,

And then she decides that we must have been wrong about the Roman numeral four because of how it was notated on the clock.  I checked every clock there and they consistently had four I's for four rather than IV.  So I had to know why it was different that what we all know to be correct.  The following theories are a few theories about why this occurs.  Generally they related to the preference of ancient monarchs, the similarity of IV to the name of the God of Jupiter and symmetry both visual and weight balance.

 "There is a story that a famous clockmaker had constructed a clock for Louis XIV, king of France. The clockmaker had naturally used IV for four. When the clock was shown to the king, he remarked that IIII should have been used instead of IV. When it was explained to him that IV was correct, he still insisted, so that there was nothing to do but change the clock dial. This introduced the custom of using IIII for four. This is probably only a story, however, as IIII occurs long before the time of Louis XIV. And this same story is also told in connection with other monarchs. There is one reason why IIII is preferable to IV, and it may have caused the change. On the other side of the clock dial the VIII is the heaviest number, consisting of four heavy strokes and one light one, as it is usually made. It would destroy the symmetry to have the IV with only two heavy strokes on the other side. Thus IIII with four heavy strokes is much to be preferred. The change may therefore have been made for reasons of symmetry."

"Classicists who have studied old Roman inscription of marble monuments etc. say that IIII was very often, perhaps predominantly, the form that was used in classical times. In a book picturing hundreds of tower clock dials, I found that about 95+% of them were in the IIII form. Interestingly, though, the most famous tower clock in the world, Big Ben, uses the IV form. There is also a hypothesis that the first clocks to use the IV form were clocks which had the rare feature of "Roman Striking." This used two bells, a higher pitch bell representing a one and a lower pitch bell representing a five. Thus four o'clock would be struck by one stroke of the small bell followed by one stroke of the big bell; six would be struck by one stroke of the big bell followed by one stroke of the small bell. This is a very efficient system, but died out almost entirely in the early 18th c.. "

Using four I's instead of IV for the "four" is due to the casting process of the numerals. Since some numerals were cast out of metal, or carved out of wood or bone, you need 20 I's, 4 V's, and 4 X's, even numbers of each, if you use four I's for "four". The molds would produce a long centre rod, with 10 I's, 2 V's, and 2 X's on each side.

This is apparently because "IV" is an abbreviation for "Jupiter" in Roman times. So they decided to use "IIII" so that their public clocks didn't have "1 2 3 GOD 5..." written on them.