Old style monetary denominations sound crazy to me - pence, pounds, farthings, shillings, guineas - you must have needed a glossary every time you went to the shops !
Up into decimalisation, old money was all that we knew and were familiar with. It was an every day part of our life and worked just fine, as it had for many centuries.
Does anyone, ahem ..... of a certain age, remember the old school exercise books? On the back cover was all the tables of imperial metrology / measurement:
eg, inches, feet, yards, chains and furlongs roods and perches to acres gills to pints, quarts and gallons
And so on.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. What about grains, hogsheads, bushels, and poles?
A question for you people to ponder. What weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of lead?
I used to like a ten bob note, and the half a crown was also a handy coin to have as a youngster, at least in the early 60s, a quid seemed a lot of money, especially at the early 60's. Used to get half a crown for a 'wedding service' at St Georges church, for my singing in the choir. So my first pay day. Still have one in an old tin in draw. Used to call a lad on the estate a 'throopney bit', pronounced like that. When one of the pupils at Bloomfield school got a job at 14, I called it a bit of a 'two bob job'.....he is probably a millionaire now.
Thank you to decimal day for killing off the guinea, the most ridiculous and deliberately confusing monetary unit ever invented.
And still used to this day.
The duodecimal system is far more flexible that the decimal system.
Only in dealing with thirds. Decimal fits in far better to the entire Arabic numbering system.
It goes further back than even the Arabic - Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and even the Sumarians of at least 5,000 years ago were using a base count of 60 (divisible by 30 20 15 12 10 6 5 4 3 2) which you'll see includes both 10, and 12 (divisable into quarters, halves, etc).
Seems they realised they could have the best of both systems?
Meanwhile, the circle is still divided into 360 degrees, 60 minutes to the hour and so on.
Base 10 is what we've been using for centuries though, would have presumingly been Roman numerals before then?
Degrees is just one way of measuring angles, there's Also gradians (base 400) and the one used by scientists Radians, 2π for a complete turn which for reasons I won't go into the best method.
Interesting thread, need more of this and less football!
Old style monetary denominations sound crazy to me - pence, pounds, farthings, shillings, guineas - you must have needed a glossary every time you went to the shops !
Up into decimalisation, old money was all that we knew and were familiar with. It was an every day part of our life and worked just fine, as it had for many centuries.
Does anyone, ahem ..... of a certain age, remember the old school exercise books? On the back cover was all the tables of imperial metrology / measurement:
eg, inches, feet, yards, chains and furlongs roods and perches to acres gills to pints, quarts and gallons
And so on.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. What about grains, hogsheads, bushels, and poles?
A question for you people to ponder. What weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of lead?
I remember this from junior school, but then it was a ton of gold or a ton of feathers. Gold, or so we thought...
I am just about old enough to remember the phasing out of the new ha'penny. As I do not remember ever being able to buy anything with it this seemed fine.
I think the current smallest i it of currently should be the 10p
Thank you to decimal day for killing off the guinea, the most ridiculous and deliberately confusing monetary unit ever invented.
And still used to this day.
The duodecimal system is far more flexible that the decimal system.
Only in dealing with thirds. Decimal fits in far better to the entire Arabic numbering system.
It goes further back than even the Arabic - Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and even the Sumarians of at least 5,000 years ago were using a base count of 60 (divisible by 30 20 15 12 10 6 5 4 3 2) which you'll see includes both 10, and 12 (divisable into quarters, halves, etc).
Seems they realised they could have the best of both systems?
Meanwhile, the circle is still divided into 360 degrees, 60 minutes to the hour and so on.
Base 10 is what we've been using for centuries though, would have presumingly been Roman numerals before then?
Degrees is just one way of measuring angles, there's Also gradians (base 400) and the one used by scientists Radians, 2π for a complete turn which for reasons I won't go into the best method.
Interesting thread, need more of this and less football!
Only the best for some things. Degrees are easy to visualise whereas a lot of people don't even know what π is, so getting them to think is terms of it and use fractions of it is fraught with difficulties.
Old style monetary denominations sound crazy to me - pence, pounds, farthings, shillings, guineas - you must have needed a glossary every time you went to the shops !
Up into decimalisation, old money was all that we knew and were familiar with. It was an every day part of our life and worked just fine, as it had for many centuries.
Does anyone, ahem ..... of a certain age, remember the old school exercise books? On the back cover was all the tables of imperial metrology / measurement:
eg, inches, feet, yards, chains and furlongs roods and perches to acres gills to pints, quarts and gallons
And so on.
Ah, yes, I remember it well. What about grains, hogsheads, bushels, and poles?
A question for you people to ponder. What weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of lead?
I remember this from junior school, but then it was a ton of gold or a ton of feathers. Gold, or so we thought...
A ton of gold weighs the same as a ton of feathers, but my original question still stands.
Radio 4 In our time by Melvin Bragg focuses coming on Maths in the early Islamic world (8th century) starts at 9:00 today for those interested the origins of how we may have come up with pre-decimal.
I was 5 when it happened and hadn't started learning about money yet at school. I remember the adverts for the changeover in 1971 and I knew there'd been an election the year before, so I was really confused in 1975 when we didn't have decimalisation again after the elections of 74.
Thank you to decimal day for killing off the guinea, the most ridiculous and deliberately confusing monetary unit ever invented.
And still used to this day.
The duodecimal system is far more flexible that the decimal system.
Only in dealing with thirds. Decimal fits in far better to the entire Arabic numbering system.
It goes further back than even the Arabic - Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and even the Sumarians of at least 5,000 years ago were using a base count of 60 (divisible by 30 20 15 12 10 6 5 4 3 2) which you'll see includes both 10, and 12 (divisable into quarters, halves, etc).
Seems they realised they could have the best of both systems?
Meanwhile, the circle is still divided into 360 degrees, 60 minutes to the hour and so on.
Base 10 is what we've been using for centuries though, would have presumingly been Roman numerals before then?
Degrees is just one way of measuring angles, there's Also gradians (base 400) and the one used by scientists Radians, 2π for a complete turn which for reasons I won't go into the best method.
Interesting thread, need more of this and less football!
Only the best for some things. Degrees are easy to visualise whereas a lot of people don't even know what π is, so getting them to think is terms of it and use fractions of it is fraught with difficulties.
For general visualisation I would agree, although that's only really because we are all taught degrees first. I still have trouble visualising centimetres so still visualise things in feet and inches.
It really doesn't make sense though to use the random Babylonian base 60. Radians are much more relevant in mathematics, particularly calculus - degrees are about rotation and linking the distance traveled on a point on the circumference of a circle relevant to its radius makes far more sense. Still not base 10 though so not sure where this fits in a thread about decimalisation!!
I think it was the rise computers and calculators which finally saw the demise of old money.
I remember subroutines to handle pounds shillings and pence and programming anything to do with money could be a nightmare. Ordinary hand held calculators were also useless for English money.
Funnily enough, there wouldn't be a problem now - modern computers and phones can easily deal with any type units. So I don't think we'd bother changing now if we hadn't done it then!
I think it was the rise computers and calculators which finally saw the demise of old money.
I remember subroutines to handle pounds shillings and pence and programming anything to do with money could be a nightmare. Ordinary hand held calculators were also useless for English money.
Funnily enough, there wouldn't be a problem now - modern computers and phones can easily deal with any type units. So I don't think we'd bother changing now if we hadn't done it then!
There are only two countries in the world that have sub-units which are not decimal - Mauritania and Madagascar. I think we would still have changed!
I just wish the Americans would adopt the metric system. Purely from a selfish point of view from having to change imperial units in a 500 page patent specification into SI units
Thank you to decimal day for killing off the guinea, the most ridiculous and deliberately confusing monetary unit ever invented.
And still used to this day.
The duodecimal system is far more flexible that the decimal system.
Only in dealing with thirds. Decimal fits in far better to the entire Arabic numbering system.
It goes further back than even the Arabic - Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and even the Sumarians of at least 5,000 years ago were using a base count of 60 (divisible by 30 20 15 12 10 6 5 4 3 2) which you'll see includes both 10, and 12 (divisable into quarters, halves, etc).
Seems they realised they could have the best of both systems?
Meanwhile, the circle is still divided into 360 degrees, 60 minutes to the hour and so on.
Base 10 is what we've been using for centuries though, would have presumingly been Roman numerals before then?
Degrees is just one way of measuring angles, there's Also gradians (base 400) and the one used by scientists Radians, 2π for a complete turn which for reasons I won't go into the best method.
Interesting thread, need more of this and less football!
Only the best for some things. Degrees are easy to visualise whereas a lot of people don't even know what π is, so getting them to think is terms of it and use fractions of it is fraught with difficulties.
For general visualisation I would agree, although that's only really because we are all taught degrees first. I still have trouble visualising centimetres so still visualise things in feet and inches.
It really doesn't make sense though to use the random Babylonian base 60. Radians are much more relevant in mathematics, particularly calculus - degrees are about rotation and linking the distance traveled on a point on the circumference of a circle relevant to its radius makes far more sense. Still not base 10 though so not sure where this fits in a thread about decimalisation!!
Because degrees aren't measured in base 10 as mentioned by Oggy, probably because of right angles.
I was in Gibraltar a few months before decimal D day .. Gib was used as the advanced testing ground/guinea pig for decimalisation so I recall .. all went very smoothly .. nowadays one can talk to young people about £sd (not the halluciogenic (spelling) and they think that we were all quite mad to have such a convoluted system
I was in Gibraltar a few months before decimal D day .. Gib was used as the advanced testing ground/guinea pig for decimalisation so I recall .. all went very smoothly .. nowadays one can talk to young people about £sd (not the halluciogenic (spelling) and they think that we were all quite mad to have such a convoluted system
To be fair I'd always thought it was a bit of a stupid system. But it would be nice to be able to split a bill 3 ways...
I was in Gibraltar a few months before decimal D day .. Gib was used as the advanced testing ground/guinea pig for decimalisation so I recall .. all went very smoothly .. nowadays one can talk to young people about £sd (not the halluciogenic (spelling) and they think that we were all quite mad to have such a convoluted system
To be fair I'd always thought it was a bit of a stupid system. But it would be nice to be able to split a bill 3 ways...
indeed .. phands shillings and pence along with feet and inches is a more versatile system .. we had to go metric when we all went 'euro crazy' back in the 70s to follow the French designed metric system advocated by Napoleon after the French revolution .. like most things old Boney started it is well overrated .. remember Waterloo and Trafalgar AND the retreat from Moscow
Comments
A question for you people to ponder. What weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of lead?
Degrees is just one way of measuring angles, there's Also gradians (base 400) and the one used by scientists Radians, 2π for a complete turn which for reasons I won't go into the best method.
Interesting thread, need more of this and less football!
Gold, or so we thought...
I think the current smallest i it of currently should be the 10p
I remember the adverts for the changeover in 1971 and I knew there'd been an election the year before, so I was really confused in 1975 when we didn't have decimalisation again after the elections of 74.
It really doesn't make sense though to use the random Babylonian base 60. Radians are much more relevant in mathematics, particularly calculus - degrees are about rotation and linking the distance traveled on a point on the circumference of a circle relevant to its radius makes far more sense. Still not base 10 though so not sure where this fits in a thread about decimalisation!!
I remember subroutines to handle pounds shillings and pence and programming anything to do with money could be a nightmare. Ordinary hand held calculators were also useless for English money.
Funnily enough, there wouldn't be a problem now - modern computers and phones can easily deal with any type units. So I don't think we'd bother changing now if we hadn't done it then!
For some amusing terms of past coinage.
Loved the 'poorly fish', and a 'string of ponies'
nowadays one can talk to young people about £sd (not the halluciogenic (spelling) and they think that we were all quite mad to have such a convoluted system
I found it interesting that "pounds" didn't exist until quite late on and that 240 silver (yes really) pennies weighed a pound!
Roman origin - the denarius coin was worth 10 asses (coins not donkeys).
Deni is Latin/Roman for 10.
I can only think that penny is a vocal corruption of deni.
Anyway, the 'd' in old money was an abreviation of denarius.
I was slightly embarrassed to say I didn't know and had to look it up.