The Holy Roman Empire was a group of regions in Central Europe that was held together by a political union. The Holy Roman Empire was formed in the year 962. Let x represent any year. Write an inequality in terms of x and 962 that is true only for values of x that represent years before the year that the Holy Roman Empire formed.

x < 962  
Since the Holy Roman Empire was established in 962 and you want values of x that happened before that year, you want x to be less than 962. And conveniently then less than operator ( < ) is used for that. So x < 962.