Metric vs English

[59Elva]

On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary of declaring independence from Great Britain I find it curious, humorous , and a bit ironic that we continue to use the “English” system of measurement while it’s founders have completely abandoned it for the metric system. I guess the French finally won. Jimmy Carter tried to switch us back in the’70s but it didn’t take.
Has Britain embraced the Euro or are the pound, shilling, pence, quid and bob still exchanged? Hail Britania

[Bill_qaz]

Decimilisation of our currency was the start followed by weights and measurement.
Curiously you started with decimilised currency 100 cents to a dollar but kept our imperial measurement, exept you have gallons of a different size
You can still go into a timber merchant and ask for six foot of 4×2" timber and they just give you the metric equivelent

My house is older than your country but native Americans may disagree with the 250 years old

Happy 4th of July

[59Elva]

I find the inch a useful human scale unit. Millimeters are too small, meters too large, and no one seems to use centimeters. But if it were up to me there would be 10 inches in a foot. As my brain gets older multiplying and dividing by 12 takes longer. The machinist in me appreciates decimal inches but fractions are useful for finding centers and dividing things into equal parts. My size 8 shoe is shorter than a foot, my casual stride less than a yard. If there were four 10” feet in a yard it would almost match a meter.
We have quarters and nickels in our currency but the half dollar is all but disappeared and the penny is on the way out.
You still drink draft by the pint don’t you? By the liter would get you drunk quicker.

[geoberni]

Beer in pubs & restaurants is still served by the Pint, but remember that an Imperial Pint is 20 fl oz, not 16 fl oz.

A half Ltr, i.e. 500ml, is almost 18 fl oz, so bigger than a US Pint, but less than an Imp Pint.
Shop sales of beer, in cans or bottles, are usually 440ml although 330ml is popular for 'craft beers'; right now I can only think of one brewery that offers 1pint cans in the shops.

As to currency, it was 1971 when we went Decimal, but they rolled out the new coins in 1968 to give people a chance to get familiar with them, as the change over date got nearer, they had to get people to think in the 'new coins'.
So for example they started by introducing the 'New 10 Pence' as being the same as 2/- (2 shillings). But then switched the focus over so that people should thank of a 2/- as being Ten Pence.

[59Elva]

I never understood the English currency. Probably because of the slang terms used in old movies and British tv shows based in the forties and fifties. They talk of crowns, guinies(sp?), bob, quid, pence, hay pennies (sp?) as well as pounds and shillings.
I have a handful of British coins. Am I right to assume a penny is not worth the same as a pence? Some of the pennies are quite large, the same size as our half dollar coins. The ‘70s “new penny” is about the same size as ours.
Pound coins are thick but rather small in diameter. I have 1,2,3,5,6,10 pence coins, was there a 4,7,or 8 pence coin? Your cash drawers must have a lot of bins. Are Isle of Man coins a different currency?
Good to know about the beer, not that drink much or that I’ll likely to ever make it to the mother land.

[svenedin]

I never understood the English currency. Probably because of the slang terms used in old movies and British tv shows based in the forties and fifties. They talk of crowns, guinies(sp?), bob, quid, pence, hay pennies (sp?) as well as pounds and shillings.
I have a handful of British coins. Am I right to assume a penny is not worth the same as a pence? Some of the pennies are quite large, the same size as our half dollar coins. The ‘70s “new penny” is about the same size as ours.
Pound coins are thick but rather small in diameter. I have 1,2,3,5,6,10 pence coins, was there a 4,7,or 8 pence coin? Your cash drawers must have a lot of bins. Are Isle of Man coins a different currency?
Good to know about the beer, not that drink much or that I’ll likely to ever make it to the mother land.

I was born after decimalisation so pre-decimal currency was a mystery to me until I learned what it actually was. We are so used to base 10 counting that the pre-decimal currency seems very strange.

The system is based on pounds, shillings and pence (plural of old penny), £ s d
The symbol for the old penny is d not p which is for the decimal penny.

Each Shilling is made up of 12 pence
There are 20 shillings in a pound (slang for pound is "quid" which is still a slang term in use today)
So a pound was 240 (20x12) pence

In terms of coins:

The largest circulating was a Sovereign=1 pound. In fact there was a 5 Sovereign=£5 but this was uncommon
Crown=5 shillings (or 1/4 pound)
Half-Crown=2 shillings and 6 pence (or 1/8th pound)
Florin=2 shillings
Shilling (slang "bob")
Sixpence=6 pence (or half a shilling, slang "tanner")
Thruppenny bit=3 pence (or 1/4 shilling)
Penny
Half-penny
Farthing=1/4 penny

To confuse matters there was also a Guinea which was a gold coin with a value of 21 shillings

I remember my mother saying that people found it very difficult to adapt to decimal currency. It was a completely different way of counting which was totally alien. If counting in 12 and 20 seems bizarre, we had this currency for 1,000 years! The King James Version of the bible counts in 20, three-score and ten for life expectancy for instance (Psalm 90 vs 10). Modern French counts 80 as four-twenties. In fact France used a very similar currency to Britain until 1795.

So that's my take on it as a British person born after currency decimalisation.

Stephen

[Bill_qaz]

You forgot the groat Stephen, it is a traditional British and Irish silver coin worth four pence (or one-sixtieth of a pound). First minted extensively in 1351 under Edward III, the name derives from the Dutch "groot," meaning "great" or "heavy," as it was initially the largest silver coin in everyday circulation.

Maundy Money: While the traditional groat is no longer in circulation, fourpence pieces are still struck today by the Royal Mint exclusively as ceremonial Maundy money, gifted to British pensioners on Maundy Thursday

standard British Full Gold Sovereign coin is currently worth approximately £715 to £718 in pure gold "melt" value (around $910 to $915 USD),

£1 Notes and 10 shilling notes were the common pre-decimal currency rather than coins

[59Elva]

Thank you gentlemen for the explanation. Seems complicated. I see the fractional aspect now.
So how many of these 12-13 coins are typically found in circulation? Seems like an excessive variation of the pence.
Usually the only 4 coins in my pocket would be pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and the mint stopped making pennies. They say it costs 3 or 4 cents to make even out of crappie copper plated zinc. In 1943 they were made from steel and held up remarkably well. Never seen a rusty one. Drop a zinc penny on a salted road in the winter and it will have a hole eaten thru it in the spring.
You might be able to get a half dollar or new dollar coin at the bank but I haven’t seen any in ages. Half dollars are bulky. The new dollar looks too much like a quarter and with vending machines accepting bills and electronic payment the coin never caught on.
I also have a German or Austrian shilling and a Caribbean dime with Queen Elizabeth on the back.
Rarely someone will use the term score. Abe Lincoln immortalise it in his Gettysburg address in 1863. Probably not being taught in grammar school today but required when I was a kid.

[Bill_qaz]

Isle of Man 50 pence is decimal to commemorate a TT race anniversary, you also have IOM 5 pence also decimal.
Your pre decimal coins I've marked with orange blob in picture.

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[svenedin]

You have quite a nice little collection there.

Don't confuse the pre-decimal coinage with the post-decimalisation coinage. Only two of the old coins carried over when the currency was decimalised. Why certain coins transferred over and others did not, I do not know. The shilling coin carried on and was revalued as 5 "new pence". Likewise the Florin became 10 new pence. Eventually, these coins were withdrawn and different modern versions introduced. A 50 pence piece was introduced and later a 20 pence piece.

Stephen

[XWL61]

To add to the discussion;

The guinea was de-monetized with the Great ReCoinage of 1816. Its value of 21 shillings was decided by Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint.
The sovereign, half sovereign, double sovereign and quintuple sovereign are still legal tender.
The sixpence was finally demonetised in 1980.

The Victorians had an attempt at decimalisation in 1849. Google 'godless florin'.

Andy

[geoberni]

You have quite a nice little collection there.

Don't confuse the pre-decimal coinage with the post-decimalisation coinage. Only two of the old coins carried over when the currency was decimalised. Why certain coins transferred over and others did not, I do not know. The shilling coin carried on and was revalued as 5 "new pence". Likewise the Florin became 10 new pence. Eventually, these coins were withdrawn and different modern versions introduced. A 50 pence piece was introduced and later a 20 pence piece.

Stephen

The only coins to transfer over, after final withdrawal of pre-decimal currency on 31 August 1971 (Decimal Day itself was Monday 15 February 1971) were the 1/- and 2/-, because they had a direct equivalent in the 5p and 10p.
Those 2 Decimal coins having been made to identical dimensions to their shilling predecessors; they could therefore continue in use until eventual resizing in the 1990s.

The 10/- Note had been withdrawn in late 1970 ahead of Decimal Day, replaced by the 50p coin; it was a very carefully choreograph process to gradually change it over and it went very smoothly.
I was a young teenager at the time so have quite good memories. The most objection was naturally from 'Pensioners' who couldn't understand the need for anything to change, but going to a base 10 system made perfect sense, if only as global movement and interaction was becoming to much more common.
The earliest attempts to look at changing to a decimal system had been in the early 1800s; you could say the introduction of the 2 Shilling, or Florin, had been the first step since it was 1/10th of a Pound.

I have a small collection of pre-decimal coins, thanks to my late father's random collections of 'stuff' I inherited.

The 3d coin (thruppence) had been produced since the 1600s, but was quite small and by the 1930s was very much disliked in much of the UK because of it. In the mid 1930s, it was replaced by the 12 sided version, which was much larger. It too was phased out ahead of 'D-Day' to reduce the number of coin denominations the public had to handle; of course it also had no direct equivalent decimal value, unlike the 6d, which could be used as 2.5 New Pence.

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I think perhaps one of the reasons the general public were nostalgic about the old coins was because of their longevity, a link to our national history.

I lived in the USA for 3 years and don't ever recall seeing old worn coins, but look at these 6 examples of old 1d coins.
Simply legal coins in circulation pre 1971, the oldest top left is from Queen Victoria, circa 188* , so around 90 years in circulation.
Having these in your pocket would have given you a subconscious sense of connection to times past.
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[59Elva]

When the US mint changed from silver to copper nickel laminate in the sixties the silver coins disappeared. Whether it was collectors, speculators, or the government they’re gone. I don’t think the laminate coins wear as well. The copper zinc pennies corrode badly. Copper pennies and the older nickels wear well but the price of scrap copper may be skimming them out of circulation. Not sure what the composition of nickels is now. I think it was different during WWII.
Bill B.

[MikeNash]

As an aside, the UK's penny and tuppenny pieces changed in 1992 from bronze to copper plated steel, so the earlier coins were rustproof, and if drilled, will give you a supply of rustproof washers. Just test your small change with a magnet.
MikeN.