http://www.iupac.org decide these things.

They are very difficult decisions,
and so it is essential that they have peace and quiet to make them, for instance on long residential conferences in the Bahamas or Hawaii or on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Do the current chemistry books in schools and colleges include the current version of roman numeral names?

Or is there a popular movement away from the old numbers?

Who started the 1-18 system?

Books are printed on paper so they can't magically change after they've been printed.

I already told you, IUPAC make the nomenclature rules.

The current IUPAC table at
http://www.iupac.org/reports/periodic_table/index.html
has the 1-18 group names, no Roman numerals/letters.

I couldn't find answers on the IUPAC site; it doesn't seem oriented to readers with questions.

I found a few sites that explain "there were two versions of the old number system, a European and American system.
IUPAC replaced both with the 1-18 system." (my paraphrase)
http://www.fact-index.com/p/pe/periodic_table_group.html
http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Periodic:table:group.htm

I have a 1995 book ("Introduction to General, Organic & Biochemistry" Saunders College Publishing) that uses the "American" system, but also the 1-18 numbers, so it's been around for at least ten years.

Yet a 2003 book ("Chemistry Demystified" McGraw-Hill) uses the "European" system (with exceptions) and doesn't use the 1-18 number system at all. They mention IUPAC on page 45 "in order to avoid confusion, set up a standard numbering plan in which columns were numbered I - VIII." How's that for demystifying?

They do include reference to http://www.webelements.com, which led me to this forum.

I also found a nice product "Integral Scientist Periodic Table" (http://www.qivx.com/) that uses 1-18.

I found answers to two questions:
(1) When did IUPAC agree to the 1-18 number system?
1985
(2) What do current school books promote?
A local high school teacher said their books have the 1-18 system though older wall charts include the Roman numeral system. She felt there was some but little value to the older systems; was not aware there were two Roman numeral systems.

Details for getting answer to (1):
http://www.webelements.com/
click Author: Mark Winter (author of webElements.com)
http://www.shef.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html
click Sheffield Chemdex
http://www.chemdex.org/
click Periodic Table
http://www.chemdex.org/index.php?sid=452632098&t=sub_pages&cat=220
click History of the Periodic Table
http://www.chemdex.org/index.php?sid=452632098&t=sub_pages&cat=561
click Visual Elements – History
http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/pages/history.html
Second paragraph:
“Today there are 111 elements recognised by IUPAC, and these are usually displayed in the form of a matrix called a periodic table. The term periodic came from the regular occurrence of certain chemical properties in the list of known elements when these are arranged in order of increasing relative mass. The common form, complete with the new group numbers (1-18) were finally agreed by the International Union of Pure Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, in 1985, after years of wrangling. In truly Parkinsonian fashion, this least important of changes has probably consumed the most effort!”

If 1-18 was agreed upon in 1985, it appears even more mysterious why a book written eighteen years later ("Chemistry Demystified" by Linda Williams) ignores it.

well that's very thorough research you've done!

Ultimately though,
like many of these arcane nomenclature things IUPAC pontificate on, it's not really *that* important ;-)

I suppose the original numbers I to VIII were quite nice at labelling the highest valency exhibited by the elements (even though there were loads of exceptions)

Groups '1 to 18' works out quite nicely because for 11 - 17, if you strip off the '1', you're still left with the '1 to 7' max valency label.

I must say I have a soft spot for proper names for groups - I always thought "pnictides" for Group 15 was a wonderful name :-)
Groups 13 and 14 deserve names!

As a person beginning to learn about this, it's my understanding the basic idea of the table is related to the groups. So I'm interested in how the elements are organized by similar properties.

We normally don't tell the parents their baby is ugly. Whoever designs a system, it's their "baby" and normally defend it. I think there is value in knowing why and how Henry Ford set up his assembly system; how people discoverd/isolated elements even with incorrect information.

I would like to see information that describes the reasons for each group system. I've seen two Roman numeral systems and at least two varieties of each of these. And the 1-18 system. It appears there may be valid reasons for each system, to highlight certain details. And as you mention, there are exceptions that the student needs to learn.

Perhaps an interactive presentation (such as on the web) could (1) identify and describe the various systems and (2) enable the reader to select the system and names. This would be similar to sorting a data file by various fields to get different viewpoints of the same information.

well, most fundamentally,
chemists in the 17th, 18th settled on the concept of an 'element' - a substance that couldn't be broken down into simpler substances by chemical means.

And the more elements that were discovered (generally, isolated from minerals dug up out of the ground),
the more people began to see trends in the behaviour of groups of elements.
People kept trying to make a neat classification system, but it wasn't until Mendelev make his Periodic Table that anyone produced such a system that everyone was happy with.
The important thing to bear in mind was that Mendelev's table was based entirely on trends in chemical and physical properties (ie its purly based on empirical observation).
And he used 8 groups, I to VIII, to encompass these.

It wasn't until the early 20th century,
when people developed theories of atomic structure,
that we had a means to explain *why* those trends existed.
With this understand (mainly it talks in terms of electron shells and configurations),
it made sense to do the "long form" of the periodic table,
which separates out Mendelevs groups into "A"s and "B"s.
It was entirely arbitrary which set were the As and which were the Bs... Europe and America made different choices.

IUPAC decided to tidy this up by renaming them as 1 - 18.

I tend to make it a point to avoid IUPAC nomenclature and conventions whenever possible.

There is a fairly new book on Mendeleev, A Well-ordered Thing, Basic Books, 2004 which gives as illustrations to the text, Mendeleev's original manuscript draft, the first printed version and two subsequent revisions made by Mendeleev.

The fact that Mendeleev revised the table during his lifetime shows that revisions are a basic part of science.