The Swiss Clock Secret You Never Knew

Imagine walking through Zurich being shown a clock tower connected to a church and getting asked: "What's wrong with it?"

Depending on how you interpret the question, you could have multiple completely different answers.

On day one of my trip to Zurich while my cousin, Cale, was giving me a little tour of the city we passes by the clock you see in the picture. He told me something about the church it belongs to and how it's one of the church bells I'd hear throughtout my stay. Then he asked me, "Do you notice anything wrong with it?"

No lie, I stood there for a solid minute, staring at this damn clock tower, completely clueless. I started spewing out random, not well-thought-out guesses. Obviously, all wrong.

Cale gave me another clue, "It has to do with the clock face."

When he said that, my mind immediately went to the numbers of the clock. The Roman numerals to be exact. Now, I don't know much about Roman numerals, so I took another minute to go over each number one by one. My knowledge of Roman numerals wasn't and still isn't great - I can confidently recognize 1,2,3,5, and 10, but the rest? I can probably mumble my way through. Eventually after scanning through my brain for any details I could remember and going over the clock again, I realized something.

In Roman numerals, you use a combination of symbols to add and subtract to build a number. An I represents 1, a V represents 5, and an X represents 10. Applying these rules to make a 6 you combine X+I to get VI, and to make 11 you combine X+I to get XI, then 12 is XII, and so on.

I put my critical thinking skills to work. All the numbers followed the same pattern except the 9 and 4, they were different from one another, even though they should follow the same rule.

And then, it clicked - "Wait...the 4 or the 9 is off, isn't it?

"Yeah, the 4 is wrong."

I looked at the clock again, "Yeah, it should be IV, not IIII."

"Exactly." Cale confirmed. I was quite happy I figured it out. Cale then went on to explain the difference and it's significance to Switzerland, which was the cool and funny part. To summarize what Cale told me:

The Fun Fact that Defines All Swiss Clocks:

The Swiss believe that this version of a clock looks more satisfying with the 4 as IIII instead of IV. The believe the IIII looks more balanced with the VIII (8) across from it. That's why on all Swiss watches and clocks, the 4 is always written as IIII instead of IV.

That is how you can tell a fake Rolex watch from a real Rolex watch. A real Rolex will have IIII, not IV.

Anyway...

Now, you and I, both know how to tell the difference. If some guy has a watch with IV, you know it's not a true authentic Swiss watch. I don't know when that will come in handy but, you're welcome :)

Swiss Clock

Normal Roman Numeral

VS

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