I've been following the discourse on 'Nought at noon' and this has reminded me of an anomoly which has puzzled me for years.
In my school technology course we undertake a project on time and so we get a lot of clocks and sundials which the students design and make. A question I am often asked is why do English clocks with Roman numerals have IIII (instead of IV) at the '4' position and most Continental and American clocks appear to have the correct IV? Was this an error on the part of some early clockmaker which was continued eventually to become a tradition or is there some other reason? Get your own zoom email - click here - http://www.zoom.co.uk/
