22

This question quotes Terry Pratchett's claim:

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

Is this a fair comparison with its inference that British currency was significantly more complex than decimal currency?

Or is it a simple matter of lack of familiarity leading to misunderstanding?

For purposes of comparison, even though it is a century earlier, the era of interest I believe is best taken from 1800 to 1850, early to mid 19th century. Both the U.K. and U.S. are then on a metallic currency standard, and the smaller coins in both currencies still retain real buying power. I believe this provides a better comparison than latter time periods, say after the Second World War, would.

Update

Although I have posted an answer below, I have no intent to accept it. The material there is posted as a resource for any and all who would care to attempt a definitive answer.

GO FOR IT!

Pieter Geerkens
  • 72,560
  • 9
  • 210
  • 330
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – MCW Feb 02 '21 at 15:04
  • For a good overview of British currency pre-decimalisation see https://youtu.be/R2paSGQRwvo

    It turns out to be surprisingly rational.

     – DrMcCleod Feb 03 '21 at 18:24
  • 2
    One of the big drivers for decimalisation was the use of computers for accounting. Big companies needed to computerise to compete, but they couldn't buy off-the-shelf computers and accounting programs that worked for the rest of the world because of our weird currency. At one point ICL produced machines which had special hardware for sums with UK money, but IBM weren't going to do that. International trade was similarly complicated. Hence a drive to switch to something that the rest of the world understood. – Paul Johnson Feb 04 '21 at 14:46
  • @PaulJohnson: Exactly - There wouldn't have been enough baloney to slice to make the programmers millionaires if the currency unit had that many divisors. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 04 '21 at 17:23
  • @PieterGeerkens Other than in Star Treck, most people at that time were unaware that computers existed. It certainly played no role in public discussions. Internaly they probably used pennies, with input/output functions to make the sums 'readable' for humans. – Mark Johnson Feb 04 '21 at 20:20
  • 1
    @MarkJohnson: Don't be absurd. Every single large corporation was flooding the postal systems with "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" 80-column punched cards to be returned with bill payments, etc. No household with a mortgage or utility bill was unaware of the computers being used to tabulate and print those bills, and process the return payments. My high school purchased its first small computer in 1971. H.P. and T.I. Electronic calculators were ubiquitous by 1974, to the extent that exams no longer accommodated slide-rule equipped students by 1975. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 04 '21 at 20:24
  • @PieterGeerkens That maybe true in the US and Canada, but in my school year in England 1972/73 none of that was apparent. Everything was done by typewriter or per hand. We certainly had no calculators. – Mark Johnson Feb 04 '21 at 20:39
  • 1
    @MarkJohnson: Here is the HP Christmas Guide featuring the HP-55 at MSRP of USD $355. For my Circuits II exam in spring 1976 I was the only student without a calculator, and the Professor opted to not make all triangles Pythagorean - making the exam a VERY VERY long one for me doing it on a slide rule. Other calculators were available at lower prices: HP-25 was just MSRP $195 for xample. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 04 '21 at 20:47
  • @PieterGeerkens Be it as may, as someone who lived there during that time (the first decimal coins came out while I was in Ireland), computers was something that existed for the average person only in science fiction television series or films. They played no role in the public discussion about the planned 'funny money'. – Mark Johnson Feb 04 '21 at 21:08
  • @PieterGeerkens Remember also that in Britain at the time, foreign exchange was still problematic. When I started to work in Germany in 1974, computer printouts for payslips had just started (was outsourced). Offices still used mechanical adding or booking machines. When I started a course for programming in 1980, the punched cards were collected daily and were ran through at the hospital where the teacher worked. So in Europe they were not so common place. – Mark Johnson Feb 04 '21 at 21:35

7 Answers7

47

[Another] question quotes Terry Prattchett as:

"The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated."

Is this a fair comparison with its inference that British currency was significantly more complex than decimal currency?

No. The quote is from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett (not Prattchett) and Neil Gaiman. It's a humorous work and the quote is an ironic joke, not a factual claim. Of course the process of changing over was complex even though the new system was simpler. (Wikipedia seems very prim, with its continual mentions of Decimal Day. In practice, it was known as D-Day, to cash in on the historical allusion to WWII.)

I'm old enough to have used both systems. Whilst the pre-decimalisation system was objectively more complex with its base 12 and base 20 calculations than an all base 10 system, using £sd coins was no harder for day-to-day transactions for those familiar with it than using decimal coinage. More involved activities, such as working out interest rates, were complicated by having to work in multiple bases but for everyday work this was offset by the extra factors available working in base 12 rather than base 10. (⅓ of 2/- -> 8d. ⅓ of 10p -> oops.) Plus we kept up our mental arithmetic skills by not having calculators.

Graham Nye
  • 531
  • 4
  • 5
  • 3
    Good find. I simply copied that from the references question, so you should point out that correction there as well. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 02 '21 at 01:12
  • 5
    Working with pre-decimal currency may have been easy for people who grew up using it, but I'd bet it was fairly baffling to tourists and immigrants... – user3153372 Feb 02 '21 at 10:13
  • 9
    When in foreign climes, I tend to proffer my wallet to the vendor, who then proceeds to select a few notes and return me a few coins. Works every time. – Mawg says reinstate Monica Feb 02 '21 at 10:29
  • @user3153372 True, though I find dealing with unfamiliar currency baffling anyway. Note from Pieter's table that there were separate series of both shilling and pence coins. When needing to pay x/y, given sufficient change, you could just count out x shillings and y pence without needing to convert between shillings and pence. – Graham Nye Feb 02 '21 at 15:07
  • 2
    @user3153372 the US still has this problem, though not because of bases - if you don't know how many cents are in a nickel or dime (or less likely, a penny), good luck because the numerical values aren't printed on the coins – llama Feb 02 '21 at 18:46
  • 2
    Virtually nobody uses coins anyway. Whatever the bill, you typically round up to the nearest dollar and get back change. Coins accumulate until you have enough to take them to a bank or coin-counting machine to get back paper bills. – chepner Feb 02 '21 at 19:48
  • 5
    @user3153372 "baffling to tourists" is an interesting point; the British Lsd system is famously adapted from the Latin "librae, solidi, and denarii", though the ancient Roman system was actually rather different and I think the English Lsd came from the Franks. At one stage similar divisions were widespread throughout Europe: 1 livre = 20 sols/sous = 240 deniers in pre-revolutionary France, for example, but with national variations, e.g. Dutch 1 gulden = 20 stuivers = 160 duit = 320 penningen, Ottoman 1 kuruş = 40 para = 120 akçe. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-decimal_currency – Silverfish Feb 02 '21 at 20:27
  • By 1850, many countries had decimalised. Britain wasn't a sole hold-out (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimalisation for dates) and many would recall their homeland's pre-decimal system. By 1950 the UK stance looked more archaic! Units of currency fitted into a wider set of everday units, not base 10 but good divisibility: 1 stone=14 pounds=224 ounces, 1 yard=3 feet=36 inches. The less educated would know and be comfortable with fractions more than decimals. So Lsd felt natural to natives, and, tho metric was gradually supplanting continental traditional units, less alien to visitors than now – Silverfish Feb 02 '21 at 20:45
  • 2
    @chepner in 1971 when Britain went decimal, there was only one credit card (Barclaycard) available, and it was less than 4 years old. Everyone used cash for everyday shopping. – grahamj42 Feb 02 '21 at 21:28
  • 1
    Non-decimal currency is a challenge for programmers! – grahamj42 Feb 02 '21 at 21:30
  • 2
    @grahamj42. So is decimal. Non-binary is the challenge – Mad Physicist Feb 02 '21 at 22:55
  • 11
    @chepner that's a very US-centric view. In Britain unlike the US, for a time we kept up quite well with the pace of converting notes to coins when inflation justified it. So where your largest coin in common usage (ignoring the dollar and half dollar which are rarer) is worth 18p, our largest coin in common usage is worth £2. As you can imagine lots more people in Britain will pay for things with coins. (Though of course with the advent of contactless cards and COVID lots of people are now using coins and cash less). – Muzer Feb 03 '21 at 00:08
  • 1
    @llama the penny has "ONE CENT" and the nickel "FIVE CENTS" on the reverse. For quantities relative to the dollar, the dime has "ONE DIME" on the reverse and the quarter "QUARTER DOLLAR" on the obverse. – gormadoc Feb 03 '21 at 01:34
  • 2
    I have to admit it's weird that our dimes say "ONE DIME" instead of "TEN CENTS." How many people are there who know how to read, and know that "one dime" is ten cents, but don't already know that that little silver-colored coin is ten cents? – Tanner Swett Feb 03 '21 at 02:37
  • 2
    @TannerSwett: "Dime" means "tenth", not "ten", so it's like the "quarter": it's telling you how much of a dollar it is, not how many cents it is. (Of course it would help if usage of this word had survived for anything except the coin.) – Nick Matteo Feb 03 '21 at 03:46
  • 1
    It might be worth pointing out that in pre-Decimal Britain, although there were three units of currency, we usually only used two at a time. Very cheap items (sweets, crisps) were priced in pennies - 2d, 6d. Medium items like groceries were priced in shillings and pence (2/6 - two shillings and sixpence). Higher value things (shoes, clothes) were in pounds and shillings (£3 6s - three pounds and six shillings). Very high value items (cars, houses) were in pounds only (£560 for a car). That made counting a bit easier. – Oscar Bravo Feb 03 '21 at 09:12
  • 4
    @OscarBravo Unless it was a fancy car; then it would have been 534 guinea. –  Feb 03 '21 at 12:42
  • @Muzer It was in reference to US coinage. – chepner Feb 03 '21 at 12:48
  • @chepner: I have to disagree about "virtually nobody" using coins. At least in my part of the US, it's not uncommon in e.g. grocery stores or other places where paying cash is still the norm. – jamesqf Feb 03 '21 at 16:50
  • @gormadoc ah so they do, I must have just looked at a dime and extrapolated – llama Feb 03 '21 at 18:12
  • @Muzer the Swiss still have coins up to 5 francs (1CHF ~= 1USD), which is a real pain in the ass when you're on the border and have to deal with both francs and euros – llama Feb 03 '21 at 18:15
  • @llama 5 and 10 Euro coins also exist in various Euro using countries. They are usually limited issue commemorative items and collectable so no one really want to us them as normal currency, but they are legal currency. – Tonny Feb 03 '21 at 18:34
  • @Tanner Swett: There's actually a reason why it's called one dime rather than 10 cents. The US currency system originally specified names for 5 decimal units: the mill, cent, dime, dollar, and eagle. Inflation and the demise of gold coinage have eliminated the first and last from common usage, though the mill is sometimes used in accounting, for pricing really cheap things, and coin collectors still refer to $10 and $20 gold coins as eagles or double eagles. – jamesqf Feb 03 '21 at 19:55
  • Navaho terms for money are fun. A dollar is tʼááłáʼí béeso ("one peso"); 25 cents is naaki yáál ("2 reals", and similarly for 50 and 75 cents), 15 cents is gíinsi ("quince"), a dime is dootłʼiz ("turquoise"), a nickel is łitso ("yellow"), and a penny is łichííʼ ("red"). According to Wiktionary these colours come from the colours of the fractional currency notes issued during the Civil War – Colin Fine Feb 03 '21 at 21:56
  • @Muzer: It's not that simple. The US has tried to introduce dollar coins many times, and already has a fifty-cent piece. But the American public simply refuses to use them. In 2008, they were apparently so desperate that they started selling dollar coins at face value, with free shipping, directly to the public. But Americans still hate coins, and selling them over the internet changes nothing. – Kevin Feb 04 '21 at 08:55
  • @chepner ah there was nothing in your comment to imply you were replying to llama so I thought you were commenting generally. My apologies. – Muzer Feb 04 '21 at 14:49
  • @Kevin And yet many cling to pennies like the economy would collapse without them :) – chepner Feb 04 '21 at 14:52
13

Here is a comparison chart with rough equivalences between coin values. I've matched coins at an approximate ratio of "1£ : $4" as covering both coin ranges and approximating the exchange rate of the time.

s. / d.1 Pence Equiv. Coin / Note Name U.S. Value Cents Equiv. U.S. Coin
0 / ⅛ ⅛ d. Half-Farthing - - -
0 / ¼ ¼ d. Farthing $0, ½₵ ½₵ Half Cent
0 / ½ ½ d. Ha'penny (Half-Penny) $0, 1₵ 1₵ Cent (Penny)
0 / 1 1 d. Pence - - -
0 / 2 2 d. Tuppence (Two-Pence) $0, 5₵ 5₵ Half Dime (later Nickel)
0 / 3 3 d. Thruppence (Three-Pence) - - -
0 / 4 4 d. Fourpence (Groat) $0, 10₵ 10₵ Dime
0 / 6 6 d. Sixpence (Tanner) - - -
1 / - 12 d. Shilling or Bob $0, 25₵ 25₵ Quarter
2 / - 24 d. Florin $0, 50₵ 50₵ Half Dollar
2 / 6 30 d. Half a Crown - - -
5 / - 60 d. Crown (Five Shillings/Bob) $1, 0₵ 100₵ Dollar
10 / - 120 d. Ten Bob (Note) $2, 50₵ 250₵ Quarter Eagle
20 / - 240 d. Sovereign (£) $5, 0₵ 500₵ Half Eagle
21 / - 252 d. Guinea (Coin) - - -
- - - $10, 0₵ 1000₵ Eagle
- - - $20, 0₵ 2000₵ Double Eagle

As can be seen, both currencies covered this range of value with 12 and 11 distinct coins respectively, many with unique names, in approximately the same ratios to each other. I've always been more familiar with the decimal system, but I see neither has being inherently more or less complex than the other, given equal familiarity.

Notes:

  1. Standard British abbreviation for "Shillings and Pence"
Pieter Geerkens
  • 72,560
  • 9
  • 210
  • 330
  • 14
    The abbreviations comes from: denarius 1/240 ; solidus = 12 denarii ; libra = 20 solidi – Mark Johnson Feb 01 '21 at 21:19
  • 8
    [from his biography] Baron of Mauá, the first Brazilian industrialist in the XIX c., started as a poor office boy inside an import firm. After studying math at night, he could make calculations in pounds/s/d/etc. British merchants in Rio de Janeiro often exploited their counterparts' lack of math skills or knowledge of the Imperial system to make a rounding "error" and get a few extra $. Thus, his boss was happy when he noticed that the English could not fool that boy, and promoted him. – Luiz Feb 01 '21 at 22:08
  • 4
    Note that in the US the coins you'll see today are the penny (officially the cent), nickel, dime, quarter, and occasionally a dollar. – Schwern Feb 01 '21 at 22:29
  • 5
    Amounts would be written without embedded spaces and 0d would be shown as a hyphen. So the value of a florin (a tenth of a pound) would be written as 2/-. When spoken the forward slash would be pronounced as "and". "Pence" would be omitted for amounts over a shilling, so the value of a half crown would be pronounced as "two and six". – Graham Nye Feb 02 '21 at 01:47
  • @GrahamNye: Thank you for the "-" note - I've made that correction. I've left the spaces in to help an unfamiliar eye parse the amounts, though I knew that wasn't tsrictly correct. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 02 '21 at 02:08
  • 2
    @Schwern: There are technically half-dollar coins (AKA a 50 cent piece) in circulation, though you seldom see them these days - just as you seldom see dollar coins anywhere outside casinos. And there used to be many more US coins: half cents, 2, 3 and 20 cent pieces, 5, 10, and 20 dollar gold coins, probably more. – jamesqf Feb 02 '21 at 03:10
  • @jamesqf I haven't seen a fifty cent piece in years. Transit vending machines will sometimes produce dollar coins. Point is, straight table of existing coins, rather than what is used in practice, might be misleading. – Schwern Feb 02 '21 at 03:36
  • @Luiz In school in Ireland, a favourite pasttime for the math teacher was to give us a list of sums to calculate ('turn to page 47 and...'). There were 3 place values [£/s/d] (columns). First column base 12, second base 20, third unlimited. For decimal numbers you had to imagine the second column and always used base 10. I remember finding that somehow confusing, strange and not strait forward. – Mark Johnson Feb 02 '21 at 05:38
  • 3
    @MarkJohnson: About a year ago I was at a Robbie Burns dinner and went up to buy two $5 drink tickets. I gave the young woman a $20 and she proceeded to carefully look up on her cross-indexed chart what the correct change to dispense was when no $10 was available - while I just watched, in stunned amazement that the ability to calculate $20 - 2 * $5 = 2 * $5 is no longer taught in school. After nearly a minute she hesitantly produced the pair of $5's, as if to ask: "Did I get that right?" – Pieter Geerkens Feb 02 '21 at 10:56
  • 13
    @Pieter If I pay for a £10.05 item with a £20 note and a 5p coin a young sales assistant will stare at me as if I'd grown a second head. Conversely if I paid for the same item with just the £20 note an older assistant will ask me "have you got the 5?" in order to avoid counting out a handful of change. – Graham Nye Feb 02 '21 at 15:25
  • 2
    Wot no tanner, sovereign nor groat? (Tanner was another name for 6d, groat was 4d. And sovereign was a £1 coin) – user_1818839 Feb 02 '21 at 15:28
  • @Schwern: I see both occasionally, but then I live where casinos are rather more common than transit vending machines. (At least I think so, not having much personal contact with either.) So they may come from being used as gambling tokens. – jamesqf Feb 02 '21 at 16:43
  • @PieterGeerkens As a schoolboy in Ireland, we had more pressing problems. At class breaks (where we were not allowed to leave the premises) we rushed out to the local newspaper shop, where outside a chocolate bar machine had been placed (schoolboys weren't allowed in during school). We each waited patiently until our turn, then started to search through our junk filled pockets for an Irish 6d coin. Anti English sediments were expressed when only English 6d coins could be found that didn't fit into the machine. We were vaguly aware of rumblings in the north that were later called 'The Troubles' – Mark Johnson Feb 02 '21 at 16:45
  • @BrianDrummond For the Groat probably because there was no US equivalent. For the tanner and sovereign, the 6d and 20/- (pound) covers that. – Mark Johnson Feb 02 '21 at 17:10
  • 1
    @BrianDrummond: Better? – Pieter Geerkens Feb 02 '21 at 17:18
  • 7
    Better. Unofficially, post-decimalization, was the Maggie (the new £1 coin in the 1980s). Because it was thick, brassy, and thought it was a sovereign. – user_1818839 Feb 02 '21 at 17:42
  • 1
    @PieterGeerkens On https://coinsite.com/how-much-was-the-english-pound-worth-in-american-dollars-in-1850/ the exchange rate seems to be 4.35 and not 10, based on the intrinsic silver bullion value. Also, maybe it's obvious on a history site, but one might note that with inflation, a crown when it was used would buy much more than a quarter of a pound would today. – Law29 Feb 02 '21 at 17:46
  • @Law29: Good; thank you. I knew it was close to 4:1 but I mistakenly matched Pence to Pennies at that rate instead of the proper Pounds to Dollars. Now corrected. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 02 '21 at 18:13
  • 1
    It should be noted that many of these coins were no longer in circulation at the time of D-day. My recollection is that the only ones in general circulation were 1/2d, 1d, 3d, 6d, 1s, 2s, 2s6d, 10s(note), 1£ (note), etc. (According to Wikipedia, the sovereigns were replaced with notes in 1914. Farthings were withdrawn in 1961.) – Stephen C Feb 03 '21 at 00:46
  • There was also a three-halfpence coin in the 19th century. – Stephen C Feb 03 '21 at 00:50
  • And also the double-florin, introduced as the second stage of decimalisation after the florin. All based on the ludicrous principle that we have ten digits so it's compulsory to have everything counted by tens as "it's easier". Yet Britain built the largest empire known despite the "burden" of the imperial system. LSD was a powerful brake on inflation - increasing prices to 1/- was noticeable - in fact, remarkable. Far from being easier as claimed by the metricists, it has robbed the young of the mental exercise of switching number-bases consequently we have confused barmaids & excess heads. – Magoo Feb 03 '21 at 16:15
  • 1
    My father used to call a half-crown "half a dollar" - apparently that terminology dated back to the days long, long, long ago when £1=$US4. – Magoo Feb 03 '21 at 16:18
  • The guinea with its odd value (21 shillings) has been abandoned very early as a coin. But I remember the price of clothes being still displayed with this unit in the 1970s. – Jean Marie Becker Feb 03 '21 at 17:53
  • @StephenC: The 50p coin was also in circulation before D-day. The Isle of Man, on the other hand, issued a 50p note. – Colin Fine Feb 03 '21 at 22:07
  • 1
    @JeanMarieBecker: I believe guineas are still used in some auctions: the price is in guineas, the seller receives that number of pounds, and the other 5% is the auctioneer's commission. – Colin Fine Feb 03 '21 at 22:11
  • The major difference is that modern decimal currency issues in quasi-logarithmic denominations, generally, to minimize the quantity of currency you need to carry for any arbitrary sum. The English system was based on measures of Highly composite numbers, however, for ease of making reasonably fine subdivisions with whole numbers and tidy fractions. The latter was useful in times of limited numeracy. – J... Feb 04 '21 at 02:55
  • @Magoo My dad (born 1936) used the same expression! That was a World War 2 thing - Churchill pegged the £1 at $4.03 for the duration so a half-crown (2s6d = £0.125) was indeed a half-dollar. – Oscar Bravo Feb 04 '21 at 14:46
7

My Grandmother, who was a teacher, said that adults back then naturally thought in fractions and not decimals. You've got to consider there were no pocket calculators and for both mental arthritic and abacuses divisions in terms of ratios of natural numbers. Everything someone experienced growing up in those days: Measuring devices (no digital scales then, scale weights came in fractions), clocks, coinage was in fractions. Units were in base 12, 14 or 20 because they divided nicely into more numbers, how often did you multiply or divide by 10 back then?

There was plenty of people who "didn't get" decimals, no joke. These days with pocket calculators and decimal currency children grow up dealing with decimals and now find fractions the harder of the two (look the difficulty they have with clock times) but that wasn't always the case.

Steve Bird
  • 19,763
  • 11
  • 93
  • 99
Darkshadow
  • 71
  • 1
  • 1
    A lot of it is just familiarity. E.g. people who grew up with the metric system probably find all those confusing prefixes (centi, milli, micro &c - all the way from yocto to yotta) to be second nature, and think that sensible US units are confusing. And vice versa, of course :-) – jamesqf Feb 03 '21 at 16:45
  • Nice! Even today the representation of many irrational numbers, such as surds, can be and often is expressed to infinite precision with a (repeating and finite) continued fraction rather than with the irregular decimal expansion. This can be a great memory saver in computere programs for example. – Pieter Geerkens Feb 03 '21 at 17:19
  • 1
    Shouldn't "mental arthritic" be in fact "mental arithmetic" ? Interesting lapsus lingae... – Jean Marie Becker Feb 03 '21 at 17:47
  • 1
    It is not all arbitrary, as the metric system is not just decimals. Think about a swimming pool of 10m x 10m x 1m. How much does the water weight? What is its the volum in liters? Easy: it has 10x10x1 m^3, that is 100m^3, that is 100.000 liters. As 1m^3 = 1 ton, the water weights 100 tons = 100.000 kg, exactly. Now, do the same with 10x10x1 but with yards, pounds, feet^3.... Another example, one liter of milk weights 1 kg, and its volume is 10x10x10 cm or 0.001 m^3. I think the universality and interchangeability of the SI units are the best about the metric system, not the decimality itself – Luiz Feb 03 '21 at 19:34
  • 2
    @Luiz: But why on Earth would I want to weigh the water in a swimming pool? And one liter of milk does not weigh 1 kg (whole milk, anyway, I can't speak to the nonfat stuff). If you ever get non-homogenized milk straight from the cow and let it sit for a bit, you'll see that the cream separates and comes to the top, because it's lighter. – jamesqf Feb 04 '21 at 04:48
  • @jamesqf It's the cream of explanations. – Jean Marie Becker Feb 04 '21 at 07:56
  • @Luiz - you learned things. A cubic yard of earth weighs a ton. – Michael Harvey Feb 04 '21 at 08:25
  • @jamesqf, the International System of Units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units is "a coherent system of units of measurement starting with seven base units". The weight of water is just ONE example, all units are connected like that. Thus, I have been in science projects in USA where all science (electronics, physics, chemistry, sensor readings) used metric, only the mechanical shop used Imperial because of tool availability. And milk does not have exactly water density, but it is not lead either, 1kg/l is an aproximation, good enough for cooking, e.g.. – Luiz Feb 04 '21 at 13:32
  • "why on Earth would I want to weigh the water in a swimming pool?" building a rooftop swimming pool and need to check the roof can support the weight of the water e.g. – jk. Feb 04 '21 at 13:34
  • @jamesqf Not necessary a swimming pool but consider this: "Remember water weighs 8.3 lbs per gallon." My American girlfriend and I live in Germany and have an Airstream in the US. I turned to her and said with a serious, straight face in the deep voice of an expert "remember, water ways 1kg per liter". We had a long, good laugh. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Feb 04 '21 at 16:27
  • @Luiz "the water weights 100 tons = 100.000 kg, exactly" - Rubbish. Metricist truism. PURE water (not swimming-pool water) at 4 degrees Celsius (not STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure - itself a "standard" with many, many definitions). At "swimming pool temperature" (another subjective "variable measure" - say 21°C/70°F) that volume of PURE water would have a MASS of 998.02 Kg (not a "weight" since weight is gravity-dependent and hence location-dependent). – Magoo Feb 04 '21 at 17:09
  • @ Luiz: Do you think I don't know all that? It is still confusing in language (though not so much in math), due to the use of similar-sounding prefixes. – jamesqf Feb 05 '21 at 17:37
5

I was there. (1960s) It was not confusing. Divide one old pound by three is 6/8. (six shillings and eight pence.) Divide a modern pound or a dollar by three and...

The same goes for multiplication. Three jam doughnuts at fourpence is instantly a shilling.

Having distinctive coinage made things easier still. 7/6 is three half-crowns (Instant after nearly 50 years) or if you gave a ten-bob note you'd expect one as change.

Peter Fox
  • 187
  • 1
4

It wasn't in the least confusing to those of us who grew up with it. It's rather like asking how difficult do Germans find learning the German language.

TheHonRose
  • 7,929
  • 1
  • 39
  • 61
0

Anecdote: The Viscount of Mauá (born 1813) was an early Brazilian industrialist, who had humble beginnings and no formal schooling. I read a bestseller bio about him.

One of his first jobs as an older teen, was in a importer/exporter firm in Rio de Janeiro, owned by a Scotsman. The young Irineu worked by day and studied at night by himself.

His boss realized that he could deal with sterling accounts without being bamboozled by other British merchants. This was noted by his boss as very rare - most British merchants could hide a few shillings into balances "wrongly" calculated and never double-checked by clueless Brazilians.

Because of that he got promoted. After a few years he ended up as a manager, then a partner and finally owner when his boss decided to return to Scotland.

MCW
  • 33,640
  • 12
  • 105
  • 158
Luiz
  • 4,433
  • 1
  • 16
  • 21
-3

They resisted it because they were familiar with pounds, shillings and pence amd unfamiliar with the decimal system.

Why a system designed for physics should be used for commerce and daily life is another qurstion. And the obvious answer, is there is no obvious connection and that there is no need. Besides, physics has many systems of units other than the purely decimal. For example, electron mass is routinely measured in eV.

Mozibur Ullah
  • 2,710
  • 19
  • 33
  • and distance in meters, mass in grammes - electon-volt is just another unit nothing to do with decimals or fractions – mmmmmm Sep 22 '22 at 14:49