Thursday, February 15, 2007

Decimal Day (not to be confused with Domino Day)

On the 15th of February 1971 Great Britain switched from a currency system based on the traditional LSD system (yes, it's called that way - Librae, Solidus, Denarii) to a boring decimal system. The old one was much more logical...:

4 Farthings are a penny, 3 pence a thrupence, 2 thrupence a sixpence, 2 sixpense a bob, 2 bob a florin, 1 florin + a sixpence are half a crown. 4 of these half crowns are a ten-bob, 2 ten-bobs are 20 shilling or 240 pence or 1 pound. One pound and a shilling, or 252 pence, are a guinee.

And now: 1 pound are 100 pence. How boring. Anybody could remember that...

And before you ask: yes, I spend too much time surfing wikipedia.

1 comment:

phil said...

The system gets better if you also use imperial weights and measures. Consider the following exercise:

Corn sells for 5 shillings per hundredweight. Farmer Jones has a cylindrical corn store, 6' 10" in diameter and 5 yards high, full of corn. A gallon of corn weighs 4 lb 3 Oz. How much money can Farmer Jones make if he sells the contents of his corn store? Express your answer in LSD.