this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
281 points (87.1% liked)
Technology
60074 readers
3252 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
IV is used exclusively as 4 (except for clocks as someone else already commented) since the 15th century. Ancient Romans used both writing, IIII and IV.
Interesting, are there instances of other numerals having variants or was 4 a unique situation?
Well played.
I thought the exact thing when I typed it haha
I have even seen, although incredibly rarely, IIV to mean 3. It's the same number of characters as III so there's no reason not really to do it.
I think it might have been done because it was more consistent with IV equalling 4.