Side-track: The Romans used IIII for 4, not IV, etc. which was introduced by early printers (not dot-matrixes ;-) to save space, so the original system was more

Side-track: The Romans used IIII for 4, not IV, etc. which was introduced by early printers (not dot-matrixes ;-) to save space, so the original system was more additive. Looked at in this light, you can see more easily how humanity progressed from tallying, to counting on fingers -- use fingers to tally up to four, take the thumb to represent five -- to the abacus and Roman numerals.