Roman Numerals

Roman Numerals.

This afternoon I had the TV on the channel for the Super Bowl football game. The official title for the game was "Super Bowl XLI".

"XLI" - - That means: 41. I got to wondering about roman numerals so I went to my computer and brought up the Wikipedia article for Roman Numerals. Wow, what an interesting article. Not only does the article indicate how the character symbols are supposed to be used but it mentions how the symbols have changed their usage through the centuries.

Again, I found the article very interesting. If you would like to read it you can find it at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals

Near the end of the article is a link to an article titled "Roman arithmetic". That, too, I found interesting since I've always wondered how you could do math using roman numerals.

What is the roman numeral for the number 4?
Most commonly it is IV. But in times past IIII was also used.

Even today it is very common for clocks using roman numerals to use IIII for the four o'clock hour instead if IV. Why? The above article offers some interesting explanations.