IIII persists on clocks. 7 of the 8 roman numeral clock faces I found in the house just now use IIII.<p>Unicode does not sanction it. There are unicode codes for digits 1 through 12, plus L, C, D, and M, but all my "ROMAN NUMERAL FOUR" (0x2163) are rendered as IV.
1999 would be MDCCCCLXXXXVIIII under the subtraction-less method. Ouch. Though it still ends up as MCMXCIX doing it the "proper" way despite IM being a cute workaround ;-)
Related - I've searched for an authoritative voice on why the letter 'V' was used in place of 'U'. Does anyone know? I do like the story about U with its round curves being too hard to chisel, and I've not found anything besides opinion and speculation out there.
You can still find IIII on many grandfather clocks:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIII#IIII_and_IV" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IIII#IIII_and_IV</a>