It is easy to understand. Firstly the UK has never used the Euro. Even when we were in the EU we retained the right to use our own currency and never converted to the Euro. Secondly the UK has used the modern £ since 1971 when we underwent decimalisation. So the modern £1 we use today is = to 100 pennies just like the US $1 is = to 100 cents. Before 1971 the UK used the old pound. This is also called predecimal currency. This old pound that was in use up until 1971 was 240 pennies. With one shilling coin being worth 12 old pennies so 20 shillings = one old pound. The terms penny, shilling, farthing etc were used pre 1971 in the UK as names of different denominations of an old pound in the same way that in the US you now call different coins cents, nickels, dimes, quarters etc.
I liked the old system of pounds, shillings and pence. There was nothing complicated about it. We used the 3 column system instead of two! We measured in inches, feet and yards, no such thing as a metre and we ran in yards and furlongs, 8 furlongs was a mile! It’s all we knew. 12 inches was a foot, 3 feet was a yard, 8 yards is a furlong I think!!
A Farthing is one Quarter of a Penny, it waa demonitised in December 1960. Then, there was a half-penny, a penny, a three pence, a six pence, a shilling, a two-shilling, a half crown, a crown and a ten shilling note, then the pound note. The value could be calculated easily in banks, by weight. I learned English currency as a child, so for me. It's second nature. In practice, the Crown was hardly ever used. All those weird Scottish coins stopped being used in 1707, when the UK came into existence.
We Brits used to be really good at mental arithmetic and we were taught it from our early years in school. There is an error in the number of coins and notes because we also had a 10 shilling (10 bob) note. All of the tills at shops were keyed very differently. When we switched we also had the 1/2 p which replaced the penny and we kept the 6 pence coin but called it 2 1/2p we also replaced the 10 shilling note with a 50 p coin. So you could buy an item in the shops that was priced at 99 1/2p. The reason it was regarded as complicated was because the old coins were still legal and only withdrawn once they were cashed at a bank. So you had to do additional mental arithmetic when using say the three pence coin which was worth 7.2p (2.4 x 3) in new coin, which of course was always rounded down. Once the old coinage was almost gone there was a date set when those coins would cease to be used as legal coinage. Interestingly horses are still bought and sold in guineas in the UK.
The video also displayed the more recent coinage, the original 5p and 10p coins were the same size as the 1/- and 2/- ones they replaced so could stay in circulation and time given for vending machines (mainly cigarette) to be modified. Most of those inside Pubs, public outside ones were disappearing as often broken into.
When I was a kid, we spent hours learning to recite "Times tables" from memory, upto x12, and it became second nature. Market Traders could works out your bill in their heads with frightening speed, using a technique called "De-compositional Math". Today in the "easier decimal age" kids can barely manage to work out their 10x table.
I also noticed that he'd left out the ten bob note! And in his example of adding two amounts, he paid using two crowns! Crowns were never used as everyday coins in my lifetime and I'm 72.
It's probably worth mentioning that the reason why there were 240p in £1 was because of how many ways you can divide it up evenly. You can divide up 100 into 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. But you can divide 240 into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120, and 240. On top of that 1s was 12p, which you can divide into 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, while you can divide a modern shilling into 1 and 5. You can of course debate the importance of dividing money up equally vs making change in your head, but 240 was picked for a reason.
While true, American 'Imperial' and British Imperial are measured differently, an american gallon for example is smaller than a british gallon. (but your point about the word still stands, unless USA counts itself as an empire :p)
@@phraggers That's because the USA doesn't even use Imperial. They use the American Customary Units system, which once upon a time derived from the British Imperial system... It's still the Brits that use Imperial, not the USA.
@@sugarplumpollyImperial measures were standardised in, I think, the 1830's. As the US had, for no good reason, decided to leave the Empire they were left with the pre standardised measures they had always used. The rest of the world moved on, most of whom have now moved on again to the way more sensible metric system. Interestingly the US is fine using metric for their currency.
I made my first trip to the UK in August 1971 when all of the old coins and all of the new coins were in circulation simulteneously. You would have loved it.
Actually some of these coins, the predecimal shilling and florin coins continued to be used until 1993 when they were finally withdrawn from circulation.
One advantage of having 240 pence in a pound is that 240 is highly divisible into whole numbers. 240 is divisible by: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120, 240. On the other hand 100 is only exactly divisible by: 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100 !
I remember the old money. Pre 1971 most people were pretty good at maths. After 1971, counting your money was easier BUT the cost of living increased. For example, if a manufacturer increased a price they would say it had only increased by a penny, but a NEW penny was equal to 2 old ones. So the public was swindled as all the prices went up. Public confusion, during the transition to decimal was due to most people trying to work out how the new money equated to the old. The trick was to completely forget the old money system and not try to convert it back to the old one. We just had to accept that we were stitched up by the manufacturers.
CRISPS!!!! A packet of crisps from the school tuckshop was 6d - which then became 2.5p. But only a few months later they went up to 5p. THEY DOUBLED IN PRICE!!!!! But because it was only a few pence, we weren't suppossed to be outraged. I was!
For now we are but the government has already started to change roadsigns through England that now state Km instead of miles, It's rolling out slowly but it's happening.
You probably won't see this comment, but if you want a video on the advantages to this system, you can watch lindybeige's video on pre decimal currency, or at least the last 10-20 minutes of it. Basically 240 is a really useful number because you can divide it into a massive number of whole numbers. Meaning you almost always have a way to divide your money into a whole number of smaller coins. And one thing that this video doesnt really get into, but which is important historically is that for the majority of its existence, the pound was actually a very large sum of money, think something like a 100-500 dollar bill! Which meant that a shilling and the penny were what most people dealt in. And if something was priced higher than 20 shillings, it was very often quoted in just shillings and pence, only if it was written down would it be written as shillings and pence. It was only in the last few decades after the end of WW1 that the value started to drop substantially such that the penny and shilling became less devalued enough to not be worth the effort, much like the cent through quarter coins. Not nothing, just not much.
Reminded me of an old rhyme : Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man's hat If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do If you haven't got a ha' penny, then God bless you
I lived through all that but didn't realise we almost kept the shilling. Our road distances are in miles, not kilometres. I think he must have been on a wind-up Tyler mission. I would love to see Tyler visit the UK. Despite everything he's 'learned' and everything he's watched, he'd be wandering around in a state of perpetual astonishment.
Ok then. Lets multiply PI by the base in both. 3.141592 * 10 = ? Easy, just move the decimal point Answer 31.41592 Now try 3.141592 * 12 in duodecimal. Good luck.
Now you know where the bicycle "penny-farthing" got its name, the wheels were of the same ratio as the coins 🚴. Speed limits and distances have always used the mile 🚦 . We have Roman mile markers! Decimalisation was used for athletics distances and scientific measures. But we all know our height in feet and inches. From Yorkshire
The Euro is only used by countries that are member states of the European Union and Eurozone. The UK has left the EU now but was never part of the Eurozone as it opted out.
That's a slightly aggressive tone for no reason...@@Songfugel. I was just saying why the UK, like Denmark, don't use the euro and it was pretty clear from my message that the EU and Eurozone don't overlap. That was my actual point. Calm down
They missed out the ten bob note (10 shillings) or 120d which is equivalent to 50p (half the value of a pound). A guinea is 21 shillings. The extra shilling is the commission on the sale of a horse, hence the Newmarket 1000 Guineas and 2000 Guineas horse races. We needed more coin denominations because everything was much cheaper. I had two shillings pocket money. You could buy four chew sweets for 1d. In 1971, us kids were ripped off, eg. a Mars bar changed from 6d to 4p, effectively a price rise.
@@clairelouise4063 Thank-you. I don't ever remember buying any in the 1970's...so probably not til I started my family, (from 1988* +, when I was 35* !!) Late starter, I guess?! 🤔🤭🏴♥️🇬🇧🙂🖖
Australia also use the old system also of shillings pounds etc until 1966. We changed too decimal that year too cents and dollars. 100 cents = 1 Dollar. We had a great animated advertisment with a jingle all Australians know. I was born in the decimal era but love the jingle. You need too look it up..
The film completely missed the Ten Shilling note (10 bob note) which was replaced by a 50 pence coin even before decimalisation. The crown was only a commemorative coin not used in normal trade although one day the coffee lady came to me with one to check it was OK as she had never seen one. I used to make up wages in cash and to this day, I can tell you how to make up any amount up to 10 shillings in the fewest number of coins. Even today the Scandinavian countries have currencies designated in Krone (various spellings) which they always translate into English as Crowns. Before the Euro, Austria had Schillings, The Netherlands had Florins and Germany had Marks which was a mediaeval coin in England Before the UK, Australia and New Zealand had decimalised based on a 10 shilling unit which they could not call a pound because of confusion so they called their new currency a Dollar which was named after an old European coin called a Thaler.
I'm 72 and grew up with pounds, shillings and pennies. I remember as a child buying sweets for a farthing.(4 for a penny) Decimal was the biggest con at the time, as overnight prices went up. As under the old system a pound was worth 240 pennies, now it is worth 100p, Example a bar of Cadbury chocolate that cost sixpence (old) overnight became 5p (new) but wages did not recalculate upwards overnight. We also used and still use the 'Imperial System', (the clue is in the name) in tandem with Metric.
You might be surprised that a lot of people my age and younger don't use imperial at all, outside of speed limits and that's just a magnitude anyway I'm 195cm tall and 70kilos. Imperials just irritating as we constantly have to go and lookup how many wotsits are in a something. Even people who "use both" are exactly the same except stone for human weight and feet and inches for human height. And I doubt they could tell you how many pounds are in a stone and inches in a foot.
@@simonrobbins8357 I think he's trying to suggest that the pound was devalued to the equivalent of 100 old pence, whereas it was actually the old penny was up-valued to 2.4 pence & the pound remained the same. It was quite common back then for a lot of people to believe that way.
The easiest system is the one that you know. For us growing up with LSD, it was easy because we had used it from childhood. A huge price inflation took place under decimalisation. It seemed like monopoly money. I was young then, but old people were very confused by the new pricing. 5p sounded cheap, but it was the same as an old shilling.
Back under Danelaw, the vikings literally wore their currency in the form of arm rings. They would remove the arm ring and cut it up to use as currency, so it is not surprising that this would convert into silver blocks. My dad was convinced they brought in the decimal system just to rip people off, he states that prices went up overnight due to it and that a switch to the Euro would do the same thing.
There were some errors in thst video. There was a 10s note, half a pound (£). so the minimum coins and notes example was wrong. Also although there was a crown it was not in general circulation. The first decimal coins were issued in 1968. In the 1960's the exchange rate from £ to $ was £1 equaled $2.40 so a penny was equal to a cent. The cost of basics in the 1950's were bread 4d/loaf and milk at 3d/pint. We still use miles and calculate the fuel consumption in mpg, even if fuel is sold in liters. But take note the imperial gallon is different from the U.S. gallon. Personally I think the decimization process has been at the expense of the average persons ability to do mental arithmetic. A lot of my generation could tell you the price of a pound weight (16oz) of something when it was priced in £sd for an ounce. And this was all in the days before calculators and smart phones.
I recall sixpenny bits (tanners) in the phone boxes! I remember thruppenny bits. I like the old money. (A farthing was before my time but recognisable with it's pretty wren on its reverse) A ha'pence, (1_coin) a penny (1_coin), tuppence (2_coins), thruppence (1_coin), sixpence (1 tanner - 1_coin)), one shilling, (1 bob - 1_coin) a florin (2_shillings - 1_coin), a half-crown (2_shillings +6_pence - 1_coin)) a crown (5_shillings - 1_coin)), (I dont recall the half or full sovereign, but I remember the ten shillings note, the ten shillings note, the £1 note, (& the guinea - £1+1_shilling) the £5 note, the £10 note, the £20 note, and rarely seen: the £50 note. _I_don't_ agree that the old money was "silly" or "ridiculous" and _I_resent_ the implication by the narrator that it was. I can now say, that (probably) I _hate_ his attitude. We changed from old money on _17th_February_1971. ... (_not_ the 15th) Yes, the decimalised pounds and pence are easier to count, (but I _still_ like the old monies and their names...) But now we just have: (in coin) 1_p, 2_p, 5_p, 10_p, 20_p, 50_p, £1_, £2_... (in notes) £5_,(a fiver) £10_,(a tenner), £20_, £50_. End of story. 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🏴🖖
It was 4 pennies when I was a youngster, the old black press button A or B phones. One inserted the coins, dialled the number or the operator connected one, when the call was answered one pressed button A, if no answer button B to get the money back. One always pressed B on entering the phone box as sometimes the previous user forgot to do so and one could have a call on them.
I was born in England 1962 and remember when they switched over to the decimal system Feb 17 1971, my younger sisters birthday . I have always attributed the old currency to superior math skills.
Tyler, the pound existed before decimal currency. He missed out the 10 shilling (10 bob) note. As for predecimal currency being complicated to work out. It wasn't if you lived with it. I was six when we switched to the decimal system, but I still remember it clearly. My mum used to wait outside of the sweetshop and joke shop while I went inside with my pocket/birthday/christmas money. I would pick what I wanted that particular day and know how much I needed to hand to the man behind the counter. At six I was very forward when it came to mathematics and have always been able to do complicated maths in my head. Great vid. I'm feeling very nostalgic now.
Funny how Americans find this complicated but we used pounds, shillings and pence as children with no problem - without calculators. We (Australia) changed to decimal system in 1966.
The original Pound was worth 1lb of silver. People used balance scales to check the value of Stirling Silver, the Latin word for Balance or Scales was libra. lots of Balance accounts would use Li to refer to a pound, the money pound originally used this to represent a pound sometimes called a Pound Stirling because of the Stirling Silver. Li was reduced to L with the i being a flourish stroke (originally two strokes) across the letter L giving us £'. A Saxon Coin was worth 1/20th of a Pound was called the Shilling or it's Germanic name "Scilling", a monetary term meaning literally 'twentieth of a pound'. 12 pennies (fenning,) = shilling or /-, each shilling was divided into into 12 pennies or d. Each penny divided into 4 (often cut into 4) called a Farthing or Fourthing.
The original English monetary pound was one Saxon or Tower pound of 350 g of fine silver, which remained the standard for half a millennium until 1346: the sterling standard (0.925 fine) was only adopted in 1526, when £1 became worth barely 153 g of fine silver or 0.474 lb (166 g) of sterling silver. So though £1 was originally 1 lb of silver, £1 sterling was paradoxically never 1 lb sterling (or even half as much)!
The United Kingdom did not seek to adopt the euro as its official currency for the duration of its membership of the European Union (EU), and secured an opt-out at the euro's creation via the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, wherein the Bank of England would only be a member of the European System of Central Banks.
I was a 9 year old living in Edinburgh when decimalisation happened. My only memories of that are how local traders took advantage of the move to inflate the price of sweeties (candy). Rounding errors in a price were always resolved upwards. The great things about there being 12 pennies in a shilling, is that you can easily divide it by 2, 3, 4 and 6. The USA has imperial miles because you were once part of the British Empire.
We use a weird mix between metric and imperial. Miles and Yards while travelling Meters etc for measuring (except height in ft and inch) Celsius for temperature Liters for liquids But Pints for milk and alcohol Pressure is in both bar and Pascals usually bar for wheel pumps and Pascals for scientific reasons. So it's a bit weird but hey ho were a weird little island
we were usimg decimal in scotland for the first time in 1969, schools were given whole sets of the new coins to teach the children in schools, what it looked like and how to use it, by making change with the new curency, and yes mopney was more complicated than now, but if you could use the old money, you were better at math just by using money every day, maybe thats why we are a smarter generation :).
The main point of the Imperial System was how "divisible" the system was. The Five Shilling Crown coin was the equivalent of an American Dollar when both were approximately the same weight of silver. The Dollar was 100 cents. While the Five Shilling was 240 Farthings, so you could divide it more ways, when pricing smaller items.
I remember my Dad sometimes used to call a crown a dollar and a half crown a half dollar. Not quite sure why though, possibly from the war years, or maybe from betting on horses.
The Guinea was more for auctions, where the extra Shilling was the Auction House's fee. Just helped keep track of what you're bidding, rather than "23 Pounds and 2 Shillings" its just "22 Guineas". For reference, British road signage has always used Imperial measurements, Miles, MPH, Yards, Feet & Inches, and I assume weight restrictions were always in Imperial Tons.
I was still in school when "D Day" was implemented. My after school chores involved delivering some groceries to pensioners. They hated the changes and didn't understand the "new" currency at all. I made charts for them all to try to explain each coin and what they were worth in "old money". Prices went up on the change "to compensate". (As if prices were ever going to go down!) They were being cheated by some unscrupulous people so I did what I could to help out. I must have explained to each of my old ladies dozens of times to try to help. I was treated to so many cups of tea, cakes and biscuits for my trouble. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it! 😉
I was 5 when decimalisation occurred. I remember my Mum having to work out her staff wages with a ready reckoner book. No calculators then! Even when my Mum had dementia in later life her mental arithmatic abilities confounded the doctor. I remember joyfully sailing halfpenny coins (which had a smashing clipper ship design) up and down the kitchen counter, which became the sea. I even fed bread and biscuit crumbs to the wrens on the fathings.
The UK is a bit weird on measurements, we switched from imperial to metric in the 1960s, and the process continued for a couple of decades, but the metrication process didn't apply to all areas of life, nor is it universally used by everyone yet. Distance is probably the major area in most peoples lives where the imperial system is still used, with a majority of british road signs being measured in miles, but it's not uncommon to hear pounds and ounces, especially from older generations who pretty much just refused to fully adjust to the metric system. Probably one of the weirder measurements of weight you'll hear in the UK is the "stone" which equates to 14 pounds, or around 6.4kg and that is often used to measure body weight. Also as a side note, the imperial system used by America isn't actually the imperial system, you guys use US customary units, both branched off from the system Britain used before switching to Imperial in 1826.
My Dad used to sing: Rule Britannia, two tanners make a bob, three make 1 & 6 (one shilling and sixpence) and four 2 bob (two shillings). Never understood a word, because I was two years old when it went out of circulation and we changed to decimal.
I’m 47, so born after decimalisation and by the time I was using money, most people were used to it. But from what I’ve been told, it wasn’t so much that it was complicated, it’s that it people had a sense of how much their money was worth, but suddenly that was changed, and while £1 kept its value, it was the value of pence that changed, and considering that things were cheaper back then, it was not uncommon to spend just a few pence if you’re only buying a few daily items, like bread or milk. For example, let’s say you wanted to buy a tin of baked beans and they were priced at 6p (yes, that’s what they roughly cost in the early 70s). If you understood decimal system, you’ll know that’s 6% of your pound. But if you’re used to imperial, where there are 240 pennies to a pound, then “sixpence” is 2.5% of your pound. So that tin of beans is more than twice as expensive as you think it is. And it goes without saying that some shopkeepers took advantage of this, overpricing things because older customers, with their brains still set to imperial, think it’s cheaper.
Well, that is what I was brought up with in the 60s. I can remember it. Still didn't improve my dyscalculia. We were given little booklets with examples of decimal coins and, of course, I spent them. My family were running a general store at the time and it took quite some time for our customers - mostly elderly - to accept the new coins, and they kept querying the change, but they got used to it in time as we all did. In the end, it all depends what you're brought up with. Currency is, after all, part of your encultured furniture and familiarity helps.
I loved our old currency, it bought a lot more. When we went decimal, prices literally doubled overnight, and we steadfastly refused to join the Single currency, Thank Goodness.👵🏴🌹🌹
We've always used miles and have NEVER used kilometres. We still use feet, inches, pints, gallons, pounds and stones alongside the metric system (except kilometres.) Fahrenheit is the only imperial measurement that is now obsolete. Celsius is far more straightforward.
The old Pound Sterling is similar to the Imperial System of measurement wherein 1 foot is equivalent to 12 inches. The US Dollar is similar to the Metric System of measurement wherein 1 meter is equivalent to 100 centimeters. Difference between US Dollar and the old Pound Sterling: US Dollar: $1 = 10 dimes 1 dime = 10 cents $1 = 100 cents Coins: Half Dollar = 5 dimes (rarely used) Quarter Dollar = 2 dimes and 5 cents (25¢) 1 dime = 10 cents 5 cents 1 cent Old Pound Sterling: £1 = 20 Shillings 1 Shilling = 12 pence £1 = 240 pence Coins: Crown = 5 shillings (5/-) rarely used Half Crown = 2 shillings and 6 pence (2/6) Florin = 2 shillings (2/-) One Shilling = 1/- Six pence = 6d Three pence = 3d One penny = 1d Half penny = ½d Farthing = ¼d The Farthing coin was demonetised effective 1-January 1961 due to inflation. The Half penny coin was demonetised effective 1-August 1969 in preparation for decimalisation. Notations: £4/8/9 (4 Pounds, 8 Shillings and 9 pence) £4/8/- (4 Pounds and 8 Shillings w/o penny) 88/9 (88 Shillings and 9 Pence) 8/9 (8 Shillings and 9 pence) 8/- (8 Shillings w/o penny) 21/- (21 Shillings or historically called 1 Guinea) Adding prices is quite challenging because you should have memorised the 12 Times Table to be able to add prices. For example, you bought 5 items at a store: Item#1 is 15 Shillings and 7 Pence Item#2 is 16 Shillings and 8 Pence Item#3 is 17 Shillings and 9 Pence Item#4 is 18 Shillings and 10 Pence Item#5 is 19 Shillings and 11 Pence 15/7 16/8 17/9 18/10 19/11 Total: 88/9 (88 Shillings and 9 Pence) Or £4/8/9 (4 Pounds, 8 Shillings and 9 Pence) If you gave a £10 banknote to the cashier, the change would be £5/11/3. Subtracting is quite easier: If the total price is £4 and the cash given is £10, the change would be £6. If the total price is £4/8/- and the cash given is £10, the change would be £5/12/- (since there are 20 Shillings in a Pound) If the total price is £4/8/9 and the cash given is £10, the change would be £5/11/3 (since there are 12 pence in a Shilling)
From 775 AD to 14-February 1971, a Pound was equivalent to 20 Shillings; each Shilling (sometimes called "bob") is equivalent to 12 pence (12d). £1 = 240d "d" means Denarius. Effective 15-February 1971, the value of each Shilling was reduced from 12 pence (12d) to 5 new pence (5p). 20 Shillings × 5p = 100p The Shilling lost 7 pence (7d) or 58.33% of its original value. To mitigate the situation, the Royal Mint minted ½ new penny coins (½p). Since 12 won't fit into 5, duplicate values cannot be avoided: ½p = 1d 1p = 2d & 3d 1½p = 4d 2p = 5d 2½p = 6d 3p = 7d 3½p = 8d 4p = 9d & 10d 4½p = 11d 5p = 1 shilling The new half penny coin (½p) was demonetised on 31-December 1984. I think the government already had intention to not include the new half penny coin (½p) from the beginning of the decimalisation plan. They minted the new half penny coin (½p) as the ugliest coin and majority of the people don't want to use it. It was even ignored in banking transactions. Because of its tiny size and ugly design (unlike the pre-decimal half penny which was beautiful), most people perceive it as having no value. In street markets, most of the vendors don't want to use the new half penny (½p) in pricing their items or products. They rounded-up the prices to the nearest new penny. When the new half penny coin (½p) was introduced on 15-February 1971 (Decimal Day), the government said that it is just a temporary coin and it will soon be demonetised once it lost its value due to inflation. The government's words sounded more prophetic than they ever thought; the 1970s was the worst decade for Britain due to yearly double-digit inflation (skyrocketing to 25% in 1975). Bermuda Islands had the most logical method of decimalisation, the 240 pence became 240 cents. One Bermudian Pound is equivalent to two Bermudian Dollars and forty cents (£BM1 = $BM2.40).
the old money is only complicated for first time users but for those using it everyday of their lives, it is not. Entry of Britain to EEC pressured Harold Wilson to decimalise the currency. His mistake was - he decimalised the sub-units of the currency instead of the main unit of currency. Since a Pound is equivalent to 240 pence (240d), the most logical method of decimalisation is by having a new main unit of currency equivalent to 100 pence (100d). What Harold Wilson did was - he retained the Pound as the main unit of currency and shrank its sub-units from 240 pence (240d) to 100 new pence (100p). Result: inflation
When you combine pre-decimal money with food sold by the Pound & Ounce (16 ounces per Pound). The math/maths is quite complicated and before the time of calculators there was the occasional weighing scales with a printed price per pound scale were a help if you were weighing some items. Then you had to make up a total to charge the customer with shillings and pence, including half pennies! My dad could do it, he’d been a greengrocer for 20 odd years so was experienced with pre-decimal coins. Mind you, Mental Arithmetic was a well taught subject for all ages. Even in secondary/high school we were still using pre-decimal money and the Imperial science measures. It wasn’t until much later when the Metric system of measures occurred and made things much more easy, W've always used the Pound £, for or currency, in February 1971 we went decimal but we still the £ as a base for our currency.
I still prefer miles per gallon to litres per kilometer, and as our pumps now show fuel in pence per litre I find myself converting this to gallons in my head while filling up as you only have to divide by 4.546 to get the gallons, and then divide the total cost by the answer to get the price per gallon. I have known people who were not classed as high achievers at school who could still calculate exactly how much they would win on a £2 bet on the horses at odds of 13:2 if it came in 1st, 2nd or 3rd
@@GSD-hd1yh I agree with you. I made an Excel spreadsheet that I entered my fuel in one column with the cost in £ in another mileage in a third i converted Kilometres t Miles in another, then a column to calculate my MPG. The idea was this new car would have a great history, in the end I didn't sell the car, I ad an illness and gave it to my nephew!
In America, you have the quarter, dime, the nickel and penny, in the past you has the Eagle and the Buffalo as well as other denominations, just as complex as ours, but we worked in base 12 not 10, as that can be counted on the hand, even young children could do currency calculations quickly, it's called familiarity.
What they didn’t mention was that from 1971 to 1984, there was also a decimal half-penny coin (commonly referred to as the “half-p”. It was discontinued when it ended up being virtually worthless.
I still have a few Florins around here somewhere, and some old pennies. You used to be able to still spend the Florins as if they were 10 pence coin, before they changed the size of the coins. The video you're watching is showing you the latest versions of the coins, which is why they look so different, especially in size, but when decimalisation first happened in 1971, 10p was just the same as a Florin with a new face on it, and the 5p was just a shilling with a new face, so you could use them interchangeable. This was to help ease people into the new system, so your wallet full of old money wasn't useless. While they say the there pence and six pence were discontinued, Yes, but you could still just spend them as if they were a 1 and 2 pence coin, but while the Florin and Shilling would likely remain in circulation, the 3, 6 and other discontinued coins would be removed. Also, he barely mentioned 20p coin, he didn't mention the new 50p coin.
I can still remember using the "farthing". I used to like them with the wren on the back. I, like most people used to the system, never had any trouble working it all out. I miss half crowns and florins etc. Sounds so much more interesting than "pence".
I am 77 so I was 24 when decimal currency came to us. The adjustment was difficult for many older people, much in the same way that US citizens resist the metric system of length or weight. Our brains were made to remember all the odd numbers and we were adept at working out all sorts of arithmatic in our heads. 16 ounces = 1 pound, 14 pounds = 1 stone, 8 stone = 1 hundredweight, 20 hundredweight = 1 ton. Not to mention grains and drams as smaller than ounces. You in the US missed out the stones in this set of weights. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 22 yards = 1 chain, 10 chains = I furlong, 8 furlongs = 1 mile. Not to mentions, rods, poles and perches or fathoms and leagues. I need not go into volumes. In science at primary (elementary) school upwards, we had to learn the metric units too - grams and kilograms, centimeters and meters, centilitres and litres. My mental arithmetic is just as dast as using a calculator after the brain ecercises imposed on our immature brains.
We were never asked if we wanted to go metric to me they stole one part of a culture and we should go back to imperial. £ S D was not that difficult because money had value most things were bought with coins lower than £. When £ coins came out they brought out coin holders not to lose pound coins as they were worth £10 today.
In Aus we started converting In 1970, it took awhile, i learnt both, i don't remember all of it... Strangely a farthing in the king james bible there were 8 farthings in a penny(?)...
The pound sterling (currency) is the pound sterling (currency) because the pound sterling (currency) used to literally be one pound (weight) of sterling (silver). Centuries back, like in the 1200s or whatever it was, the king passed a law saying that 1lb of sterling silver had to produce 240 silver pennies - or exactly one pound in currency. And if a pound of silver was provided, then the equivalent weight of shillings also had to be made from it. So 20 shillings had to equal 1lb silver of weight. As a result, British coinage was sterling silver right up until about 1920.
Because the coins were silver some less than scrupulous people used to shave little bits from the coins edges. This was the origin of devaluing the currency.
3:50 - ultimately, it's based on the system devised by Charlemagne during the 8th century. Most European countries used similar systems until the 18th and 19th centuries en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd
Race horses are still traded in Guineas £1.05. He missed out that we had 1/2p coins before and after decimalisation and until the 1950s 1/4p coins as well. When I was a kid you could buy all kinds of loose sweets (candy) for less than a penny - best value were Flying Saucers which were 8 for a penny or 4 for a half penny.
I’m a boomer and much preferred the old system. It made the division so much easier. Try dividing 100 pence by 3. It cannot be done. Dividing the 12 pence in a shilling by 3 - easy. Then 20 shillings = £1 so 240 pence = £1. It started hard to find a number better than 240 when it comes to division. Our whole counting system is stupid. The only reason we count in 10s is because we have 10 fingers. Imagine if we had 12 fingers:- 123456789xy10. How much better that would be.
That's not why we use 10's. The main benefit of the decimal system being in 10's is it scales up 10, 100, 1000 making multiplication/division easier, you just move the decimal point. As for 240, that is mainly a benfit of it's size, though there is something gained as it is an even number you can divide by 3. With 100 though, you still can use 2's, 4's, 5's, 10's, 20's, 25's and 50's - you only lose 3's, 8's and 12's in terms of useful numbers. A currency with 3 different base numbers - base 12 and base 20 is not helpful though.
@@graham-hood Shifting the point to multiply or divide by the base number works with any base, not just 10. With computers it is common to use hexadecimal (base 16) numbers, which use 0-9 plus A-F to give 16 different symbols - in this case a shift of one position represents multiplying or dividing by 16 rather than 10, but the principal is the same.
@@graham-hood I dont think you understand me. We could still use the 10s system, but better if we had 12 numbers up to ten - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,X, Y, 10.
Shops used to have a scale instead of a cash register, everything in the end worked by weight, 240 copper pennies weighed a literal pound in weight and there was another scale for silver coins. It was quite clever in a way because it didn't really matter all that much what the coins were named as in the end they would be weighed.
@@arthurcrown3063 Yeah I realized later I got the numbers wrong about which scale did what but I do know for sure it all made sense when physically weighed rather than counted.
We're a mess of units in the UK. Small distances are measured in metres, but longer ones in miles, especially when driving. People's height tends to be given in feet and inches. For weights it's grams and kilograms, except for people where you measure in stones and pounds. Fluids are in litres, except milk and beer, where you measure in pints.
My cooker demands Centigrade; recipes call for grammes nowadays (except for my cookbooks, all in real units), but babies are born in lbs and ounces and I still weigh myself on a proper scale in stone and lbs.
The 20 pence was not introduced until 1981 and there was a half penny in circulation until 84. The half penny was amazing as a kid as we could buy half penny sweets. 10p went a long way
Originally it was a POUND of silver , the number 240 was chosen for the number of ways you can divide it up. All predecimal currency was weighted such that any amount of coins adding up to a pound WEIGHED a pound so if you had a lot you could just weigh it out rather than count every coin.
It took time for some coins to be phased out. I remember when I was a kid, sixpences were still around, but post decimilisation were worth 2.5 pence, rather than six. It was eventually withdrawn from use in 1980. The half penny stayed around till 1984, when it was also withdrawn from circulation. But he spoke about the 20p coin as if it was introduced when we went decimal in 1971, but it wasn't. It wasn't introduced until 1982.
It worked because at the time we used imperial weights. So if something was 1 shilling per pound weight and you wanted a quarter pound it was quick to work out. 240 pence divides multiple ways without remainders
I don't remember seeing any road signs showing the distance in anything other than miles here in the UK! When the currency changed everything was rounded up to the nearest new penny. We had to get used to using the old shillings as a 10 pence, and the sixpence was used as a 5 pence piece, etc, until the old money was gradually removed when paid into banks.
In India we had decimal currency, then my family emigrated to England in 1961. I had to learn the UK system. Pounds, Schilling, and pence. I live in Spain now and use the euro. I have travelled in Europe before the euro and had to cope with different currencies. Travel broadens the mind. You have to be very adaptable in the world!
The last Crowns struck for circulation were around 1900. There were a few issues for commemorating coronations etc, after that but it was really just halfcrowns from then on, which were very popular and sometimes nicknamed half a dollar!
It wasn't as immediate a change as the video makes it sound, hence why people thought it was complicated. The new 50p coin had already replaced the 10s note a couple of years before decimalisation, and the half-crown had also been withdrawn (the crown was never in regular circulation). When decimalisation happened, the new 5p and 10p coins were made to be the same size and value as the old 1s and 2s coins so that they could be used interchangeably, and the 6d coin remained in use with a value of 2½p. The ½d, 1d and 3d coins were withdrawn, and new ½p, 1p, and 2p coins were introduced. Further changes happened in the 1980s and 1990s: the new ½p and remaining old coins were withdrawn, the 5p, 10p, and 50p coins were reduced in size, and new 20p, £1, and £2 coins were introduced. That's also the reason that most UK coins have Queen Elizabeth II's face on: every single denomination changed during her reign. Some King Charles III coins have been introduced, but it's a slow process. There's also talk of withdrawing the 1p and 2p coins entirely.
I used it and it was perfectly understandable. Arithmetic was easy with a little practise, and if you doubt that just consider how easy and quickly darts players work out their scores and what they need to finish. also, the were machines that would count money, in volume, e.g. in banks and shops had mechancial tills that would add up your 'shop'. Also, a someone who worked in IT for nigh on 40 years, computerisation of this was easy. There were functions within the programming language, especially business languages, to do whatever was necessary. The trick, as now, is to not lose fractions, e.g divide 10 pennies by 13 you get 0.69, but you can't round that to zero because you can't make money disappear so you need to decide what to do with it. Anyway A shilling got its name from Schilling in Austria, a place where historically there was silver mining. A Florin got its name from Florence in Italy, a place known for it's silver riches. All this was done in the name of modernisation. More likely it was done by the Euro enthusiasts to align with Europe. The big problem was the sheer size of these coins. And with inflation, pennies would quickly become worth more in scrap metal than in its face value. Even so, today inflation has ensured pennies and two pennies, five pennies are pretty much gone.
I remember using the sixpence when I was little and value was 2 1/2p. People still refer to Bob mainly for the use of 50p(10 Bob). Most of our cars have miles for speed and distance and road signs display yards (1 yard = 3 feet).
Yes, my roomie at junior school used the Welsh term "chwigian" (spelling ?) for ten shillings. He told me it was an abbreviation of "six twenties", which is 120, which was the number of pennies in 10/-.
I was born in 1975, so post-decimalisation, but the old Shilling and Florin (Two Shilling) coins did remain in circulation for a long time, as the new 5p and 10p coins were at the time the same size and weight as the old ones - meaning you'd sometimes look at your change and see King George's face rather than Queen Elizabeth's. The 5p was made smaller in 1990, and the 10p in 1992, and, after a brief period of overlap, the older, larger coins were withdrawn. Also, the 20p wasn't created until 1982, so was not immediately after decimalisation.
In the UK we used the Pound Sterling (based on Silver), in the US you used to have the Silver Dollar. Both currencies where the main unit of currency was linked to Silver.
So in the old days a pound was a large ammount of money so most people only had coinage. As far as im told the term “shill” comes from “taking kings the Shilling” which is a term used for joining the monarchs navy/ army. When i was young we called 10p a shilling as slang before 20p was reissued. 1/2 p were kept in circulation until the economy caught up.
Sixpences were my favourite coin (closely followed by the thrup'ny bit) - small and shiny and immensely satisfying to hold and count - they were also traditionally put in the mixture for Christmas puddings, and it was exciting if you found the sixpence in your portion of pudding on Christmas day!
The UK used and still uses miles, pounds, pints and inches and exported it to the US. It was from them that we had the name the Imperial System as opposed to the Metric System. If it hadn’t come from the UK and originated from the US, it would have been strange to call it the Imperial System. On that note, if it’s shocking that the Brits back then baulked at the new decimal currency system and its mind boggling that they found it complicated and confusing, just imagine how the world views Americans as they resist the Metric System with its base-10 system. If the UK could simply set a date to switch over, maybe the US should do so too.
Different purchases were made with different kinds of coin. For instance if you wanted to buy a loaf of bread you would use a copper half penny or penny but if you wanted to buy a horse you’d pay in silver pounds, and if you’re buying a ship you’re going to pay in gold guineas. So this made accounting much easier than it seems at first.
As someone who who as lived through both systems let me say there were certain advandages in the old system. One being, that is some what overlooked, is the number of times an old pound could be evenly divided. Example, a third of an old pound was six shillings and eight pence, a new pound it is thirty three and a third pence. Whatever a third of a penny looks like. One of the disadvantages of the old system was in computing. To have a single base of 100 is much easier to programme with than several bases of 12 and 240.
I worked in Boots before decimalisation. We had to work out the correct amount of change to give, the till didn't do it. So if something was £2 6shillings 11pence and a £5 note was tendered, we first took 1 penny from the till, then 13 shillings and then £2, counting up to £5.
We were all made to remember the whole imperial measurement system by heart - it was printed on the back of all exercise books. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 22 yards=1 chain, 10 chains = 1 furlong, 8 furlongs =1 mile. 1 chain by 1 furlong = 1 acre. A fluid ounce is the volume of 1 ounce of water, 20 fluid ounces = 1 pint in the UK (16 fluid ounces in a US pint), 8 pints = 1 gallon, 9 gallons = 1 firkin. Then we have 16 ounces= 1 pound, 14 pounds = 1 stone, 8 stone = 1 hundredweight, 20 hundredweight = 1 ton. BTW their is an imperial mass unit called the slug - much used in aerodynamics when done in imperial measure. The coinage was actually just child's play - not difficult at all.
There were a lot of coins below the pound, because a pound of silver was and is worth a lot of money. That should be fairly obvious. Even as a kid, in the early '70s, a ha'penny could buy you 6 Mojos, or Teddy Bears (sweets), so there was still value in small denominations. Disconnected from precious metals, money is easily rationalised by decimalisation. The slang persisted from the old money, to the new. People my age and older might call a 50p coin, '10 bob'. It confuses the hell out of the young 'uns, while being obvious to everyone else. We did keep some of the old coins initially, but they were phased out over time. A sixpence became two and a half pence, a shilling 5p, a florin (2 bob/shillings) became 10p. Shillings and florin remained in circulation until the coins changed size.
When the UK went decimal many coins continued in use, the new 5p was the same size and value as the shiling I'm not sure when the old shilings stopped being used but I suspect it was well into the 80s (confusing for non natives as the inscriptions on the coins made no sense in the new money). Meanwhile there was also the half new penny and the 6d (old pence is marked with a d) continued in use as a 2.5p coin. Oh and don't forget the word pence is the plural of penny. I suspect that part of the reason for keeping the old coins in use was to reduce the cost both to the Royal Mint and to the vending/gaming machine industry.
My grandma who died in 2015 never came to terms with the decimal currency, she always tried to convert prices to what she called ‘old money’. Also the use of miles is still very common in the UK. For example all speed limit signs on roads and highways refer to miles/hour, not km/hour. And we have, of course, the pint (beer).
I can think of quite a few people who use the phrase "What's that in old money?", but usually when referring to something like weight, volume, length etc.
The time of predecimal currency was simple to us at the time, it was all we knew. The money was referred to as Lsd, L for £, s for shillings and d for pennies. It also meant that we had to learn more complicated maths in order to master our money. Not a bad thing. We had £1 notes and 10 shilling notes (half a £1). Then there was a half crown, 2shillings and sixpence. The florin, 2shillings, the shilling, the sixpence, the threpenny bit,the penny, the ha'penny (half a penny) and the farthing ( a quarter of a penny). All the other coins he mentioned were not common currency when I was a kid. I'm not sure when the farthing disappeared, but as prices rose they no longer had value to purchase anything. The farthings were very pretty tiny copper coins with a picture of a wren on the tails side. The ha'penny was bigger and copper also, and eventually disappeared like the farthing. The penny was a quite large copper coin. The threpenny bit was copper and quite small but thicker and had angled edges. We didn't actually have crowns, but we did have half crowns, silver coloured, otherwise known as two and six pence. Two shillings and one shilling were both siver colour. The ten shilling note was a pinkybrown, and the £1 note was green. The fiver (£5 note) was blue. There was also a tenner (£10 note), and a £50 note ! When they changed to decimal currency my Nanna was very old, she never mastered the new coins and constantly tried to convert prices to old money in her head. She became very distressed about it all and pretty much gave up on life. She died soon after. I think a lot of elderly people also struggled with it, a lot of prices went up because we had less coin options for small prices.
Guineas are still used in livestock sales- particularly horses, and prize money of horse races is often in guineas. In 'new money' a guinea is £1.05 People thought it was too complicated because they were trying to constantly switch between the two currencies in their heads in order to work out how much something was (rather like converting from dollars to pounds if you visit the UK). As a kid, I HATED doing money sums because I couldn't get used to working in 12s and 20's. Then we stopped doing 'money sums' for a year or so in the runup to decimalisation. After 1971 it was so straightforward for kids my age (I was 9 years old when we changd over).
Mistake in video.(15:39) 1 shilling = 5 new pence not 20p We kept the shilling and 2 shilling coins, but they where now 5p and 10p. The 20p coin was added later than 1971.
8:57. bang on. for example in 1970 a pint of milk was about 5 pence. so having a six pence coin really handy. also guinea wasn't so the shops could scam you out of another shilling it was because guinea was a denomination used in finance, auctions and betting. That extra shilling would be the middleman's commision. e/g something sells at auction for 100 guinea that is £105 the seller gets £100 and the auctioneer gets £5.
I remember the cutover day 15 Feb 1971 we started to cutover to the new coins and notes ~1968 10/- became the 50p. shilling & florin just changed to the 5p & 10p same physical sizes. Crown and Half Crown had gone, well before that. The 'jingle' was "use your own pennies in sixpenny lots" ie 2½p was the closest new equivalent to the old 6d (6d or 2½p was one fortieth of a pound. Most EU countries, but not all, use the Euro. 2/- is a 10th of a pound, so 10p. 2/- is 24d - 240d in the Pound. i was almost 10yo in 1971, but still remember.
Technically we also use Furlongs in horse racing still and have acres of land, Feet & Inches are also still used, Imperial still exists to this day in some form
The best thing for me was the way prices of things depended on the product. The old, pre-decimal system, used pounds, shillings and pence. But shoes (for instance) were usually priced in shillings. So a pair of shoes would be say, forty two shillings a pair, (two pounds, two shillings). Another product would be in the standard “LSD” (pounds, shillings and pence) and cheap products in pence only. Say 18 pence and that could also be shown as one and six. Foreigners couldn’t cope at all. And that’s before we get into quineas!!!
Its always been MPH in UK . if you buy a car or bike from europe or japan you normally have to change the speedo from KPH to MPH . Most speedos tell you both anyway . The only people in the UK who measure distance in metric are runners cos 10k sounds better than 6 miles
We used miles. Old people still can use inches, feet, yards plus the metric system. Also, pounds and ounces. We have pints and gallons ( but not as the Americans sizes). But not seen any kilometres signs in the UK
The half pence was still kept after decimalisation, albeit with a new coin until 1984. The old sixpence was revalued as two and a half pence and was still used until 1980.
The guniea has been misrepresented here. Things at auction were sold in gunieas, the seller got the pounds the auction house got the shillings as thier cut. Also horses are still sold in them but now pounds go to the seller and the shillings (worth 5p in decimal) goes to the groom, stable person etc.
It is easy to understand.
Firstly the UK has never used the Euro. Even when we were in the EU we retained the right to use our own currency and never converted to the Euro.
Secondly the UK has used the modern £ since 1971 when we underwent decimalisation. So the modern £1 we use today is = to 100 pennies just like the US $1 is = to 100 cents.
Before 1971 the UK used the old pound. This is also called predecimal currency. This old pound that was in use up until 1971 was 240 pennies. With one shilling coin being worth 12 old pennies so 20 shillings = one old pound.
The terms penny, shilling, farthing etc were used pre 1971 in the UK as names of different denominations of an old pound in the same way that in the US you now call different coins cents, nickels, dimes, quarters etc.
And we didn't always have a pound coin, we had a pound note, like America has a one dollar note, surprised they haven't changed to a coin for that
@@jakesinclair69420 The gold sovereign was the original pound coin! Same size and weight since 1817. Notes only became popular in 1920's onwards.
I liked the old system of pounds, shillings and pence. There was nothing complicated about it. We used the 3 column system instead of two!
We measured in inches, feet and yards, no such thing as a metre and we ran in yards and furlongs, 8 furlongs was a mile! It’s all we knew. 12 inches was a foot, 3 feet was a yard, 8 yards is a furlong I think!!
There is a One Dollar Coin, but it really isn't popular @@jakesinclair69420
A Farthing is one Quarter of a Penny, it waa demonitised in December 1960. Then, there was a half-penny, a penny, a three pence, a six pence, a shilling, a two-shilling, a half crown, a crown and a ten shilling note, then the pound note. The value could be calculated easily in banks, by weight. I learned English currency as a child, so for me. It's second nature. In practice, the Crown was hardly ever used. All those weird Scottish coins stopped being used in 1707, when the UK came into existence.
Most of my videos are about pre-decimal British coins - I love them 👍❤
We Brits used to be really good at mental arithmetic and we were taught it from our early years in school.
There is an error in the number of coins and notes because we also had a 10 shilling (10 bob) note.
All of the tills at shops were keyed very differently.
When we switched we also had the 1/2 p which replaced the penny and we kept the 6 pence coin but called it 2 1/2p we also replaced the 10 shilling note with a 50 p coin. So you could buy an item in the shops that was priced at 99 1/2p. The reason it was regarded as complicated was because the old coins were still legal and only withdrawn once they were cashed at a bank. So you had to do additional mental arithmetic when using say the three pence coin which was worth 7.2p (2.4 x 3) in new coin, which of course was always rounded down. Once the old coinage was almost gone there was a date set when those coins would cease to be used as legal coinage.
Interestingly horses are still bought and sold in guineas in the UK.
The video also displayed the more recent coinage, the original 5p and 10p coins were the same size as the 1/- and 2/- ones they replaced so could stay in circulation and time given for vending machines (mainly cigarette) to be modified. Most of those inside Pubs, public outside ones were disappearing as often broken into.
When I was a kid, we spent hours learning to recite "Times tables" from memory, upto x12, and it became second nature.
Market Traders could works out your bill in their heads with frightening speed, using a technique called "De-compositional Math".
Today in the "easier decimal age" kids can barely manage to work out their 10x table.
I also noticed that he'd left out the ten bob note! And in his example of adding two amounts, he paid using two crowns! Crowns were never used as everyday coins in my lifetime and I'm 72.
the 4 shilling double florin was missing from this as well
Metric is only for peasants, it was not brought in for our benefit but to get the cheapest worker as they can bring in people from abroad.
It's probably worth mentioning that the reason why there were 240p in £1 was because of how many ways you can divide it up evenly. You can divide up 100 into 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100. But you can divide 240 into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120, and 240. On top of that 1s was 12p, which you can divide into 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, while you can divide a modern shilling into 1 and 5.
You can of course debate the importance of dividing money up equally vs making change in your head, but 240 was picked for a reason.
👆 This! It actually makes so much more sense to be able to divide like that.
Imagine doing maths at school, addition and subtraction fairly simple but imagine multiplication and division. IS this where long division helped?
"American Imperial system" made me roll my eyes. Imperial.... there is a clue there!!!!
I don't get how tgey can claim to use Imperial when they have no clue what a stone is.
While true, American 'Imperial' and British Imperial are measured differently, an american gallon for example is smaller than a british gallon. (but your point about the word still stands, unless USA counts itself as an empire :p)
@@phraggersAMERKA can't manage itself never MIND an Empire 😂😂😂
@@phraggers That's because the USA doesn't even use Imperial. They use the American Customary Units system, which once upon a time derived from the British Imperial system... It's still the Brits that use Imperial, not the USA.
@@sugarplumpollyImperial measures were standardised in, I think, the 1830's. As the US had, for no good reason, decided to leave the Empire they were left with the pre standardised measures they had always used. The rest of the world moved on, most of whom have now moved on again to the way more sensible metric system. Interestingly the US is fine using metric for their currency.
My dad had a friend called bob tanner, they used to call him little one and 6.
I made my first trip to the UK in August 1971 when all of the old coins and all of the new coins were in circulation simulteneously. You would have loved it.
Actually some of these coins, the predecimal shilling and florin coins continued to be used until 1993 when they were finally withdrawn from circulation.
I'm only 67 and I clearly remember the day we changed to decimal currency.
My pocket money was three shillings a week, i had a paper round in order to earn more money.
I can still sing that little jingle ' 🎶 Sixpence is two and a half new pence 🎶 '. 🙂
I remember it too. I remember those cardboard conversion gadgets with dials.
I'm also 67 and also remember the awful day. Even now, I still convert to real money sometimes. "What, 12 shillings to park?" etc.
Bit younger but remember learning old money at school and then learning new money. I used to get 6d sweet money.
One advantage of having 240 pence in a pound is that 240 is highly divisible into whole numbers. 240 is divisible by: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120, 240. On the other hand 100 is only exactly divisible by: 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100 !
Amazingly it goes back to Charlemagne who used a base twelve moneynsystem
I remember the old money. Pre 1971 most people were pretty good at maths. After 1971, counting your money was easier BUT the cost of living increased. For example, if a manufacturer increased a price they would say it had only increased by a penny, but a NEW penny was equal to 2 old ones. So the public was swindled as all the prices went up. Public confusion, during the transition to decimal was due to most people trying to work out how the new money equated to the old. The trick was to completely forget the old money system and not try to convert it back to the old one. We just had to accept that we were stitched up by the manufacturers.
CRISPS!!!! A packet of crisps from the school tuckshop was 6d - which then became 2.5p. But only a few months later they went up to 5p. THEY DOUBLED IN PRICE!!!!! But because it was only a few pence, we weren't suppossed to be outraged. I was!
I used to use this currency as a child. It was perfectly understandable!
Ditto. It was entirely clear and never caused me any confusion as a child.
We still use miles, not kilometres on roads.
We are very odd in this way I use miles per hour and miles traveled on my E-bike But prefer to fly my drone in metric, What's wrong with us? LOL!
But it was never a difficult issue when you were brought up with it from a small child. It's again down to our long ancient history.
We use both
Are they changing all the road signs and speed limits?
For now we are but the government has already started to change roadsigns through England that now state Km instead of miles, It's rolling out slowly but it's happening.
You probably won't see this comment, but if you want a video on the advantages to this system, you can watch lindybeige's video on pre decimal currency, or at least the last 10-20 minutes of it. Basically 240 is a really useful number because you can divide it into a massive number of whole numbers. Meaning you almost always have a way to divide your money into a whole number of smaller coins. And one thing that this video doesnt really get into, but which is important historically is that for the majority of its existence, the pound was actually a very large sum of money, think something like a 100-500 dollar bill! Which meant that a shilling and the penny were what most people dealt in. And if something was priced higher than 20 shillings, it was very often quoted in just shillings and pence, only if it was written down would it be written as shillings and pence. It was only in the last few decades after the end of WW1 that the value started to drop substantially such that the penny and shilling became less devalued enough to not be worth the effort, much like the cent through quarter coins. Not nothing, just not much.
Reminded me of an old rhyme :
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man's hat
If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do
If you haven't got a ha' penny, then God bless you
Sung it as a round many times at Carol concerts
I lived through all that but didn't realise we almost kept the shilling.
Our road distances are in miles, not kilometres. I think he must have been on a wind-up Tyler mission.
I would love to see Tyler visit the UK. Despite everything he's 'learned' and everything he's watched, he'd be wandering around in a state of perpetual astonishment.
Base-12 makes a lot of sense. It's divisible by 2,3,4 & 6
Base-10 is only divisible by 2 & 5
Ok then. Lets multiply PI by the base in both.
3.141592 * 10 = ? Easy, just move the decimal point Answer 31.41592
Now try 3.141592 * 12 in duodecimal. Good luck.
@@Shoomer1988 ok then you divide a decimal pound equally between 3 people.
@@adriantomkinson149 33p each and then fight for the penny.
@@Shoomer1988 Very useful. I'll remember that next time I need to buy something that costs PI pounds.
@@Shoomer1988 And your point is? When did you last buy 12 things that cost £PI (or $) each?
Now you know where the bicycle "penny-farthing" got its name, the wheels were of the same ratio as the coins 🚴. Speed limits and distances have always used the mile 🚦 . We have Roman mile markers! Decimalisation was used for athletics distances and scientific measures. But we all know our height in feet and inches. From Yorkshire
The Euro is only used by countries that are member states of the European Union and Eurozone. The UK has left the EU now but was never part of the Eurozone as it opted out.
This is not true at all, the EU and Eurozone are two different things. There are several non-EU countries that use the EURO as their primary currency
@@Songfugelyes, countries such as Andora, Manaco, & Vatican City.
That's a slightly aggressive tone for no reason...@@Songfugel. I was just saying why the UK, like Denmark, don't use the euro and it was pretty clear from my message that the EU and Eurozone don't overlap. That was my actual point. Calm down
Not so obvious to me but yes the comment could have been more well thought out.@@CarlaPegoraro-e2i
@@Songfugel Also a couple of EU countries that like the UK retained their currencies.
They missed out the ten bob note (10 shillings) or 120d which is equivalent to 50p (half the value of a pound). A guinea is 21 shillings. The extra shilling is the commission on the sale of a horse, hence the Newmarket 1000 Guineas and 2000 Guineas horse races. We needed more coin denominations because everything was much cheaper. I had two shillings pocket money. You could buy four chew sweets for 1d. In 1971, us kids were ripped off, eg. a Mars bar changed from 6d to 4p, effectively a price rise.
What I'm now wondering is... If they had Fredos back then (pre-decimalisation)
How much did it cost to buy one?!!🤔🤭
I think the main reason people disliked the change was because there was a lot of rip-offs.
Yes is was amazing how many shop keepers took advantage of the confusion and nearly doubled their prices. Every said it at the time.
@@brigidsingleton1596 3d, they then changed to 2p, which was also a price rise. fredos were also twice as big in the 1970s
@@clairelouise4063
Thank-you. I don't ever remember buying any in the 1970's...so probably not til I started my family, (from 1988* +, when I was 35* !!)
Late starter, I guess?! 🤔🤭🏴♥️🇬🇧🙂🖖
Australia also use the old system also of shillings pounds etc until 1966. We changed too decimal that year too cents and dollars. 100 cents = 1 Dollar. We had a great animated advertisment with a jingle all Australians know. I was born in the decimal era but love the jingle. You need too look it up..
The film completely missed the Ten Shilling note (10 bob note) which was replaced by a 50 pence coin even before decimalisation.
The crown was only a commemorative coin not used in normal trade although one day the coffee lady came to me with one to check it was OK as she had never seen one.
I used to make up wages in cash and to this day, I can tell you how to make up any amount up to 10 shillings in the fewest number of coins.
Even today the Scandinavian countries have currencies designated in Krone (various spellings) which they always translate into English as Crowns.
Before the Euro, Austria had Schillings, The Netherlands had Florins and Germany had Marks which was a mediaeval coin in England
Before the UK, Australia and New Zealand had decimalised based on a 10 shilling unit which they could not call a pound because of confusion so they called their new currency a Dollar which was named after an old European coin called a Thaler.
I'm 72 and grew up with pounds, shillings and pennies. I remember as a child buying sweets for a farthing.(4 for a penny) Decimal was the biggest con at the time, as overnight prices went up. As under the old system a pound was worth 240 pennies, now it is worth 100p, Example a bar of Cadbury chocolate that cost sixpence (old) overnight became 5p (new) but wages did not recalculate upwards overnight. We also used and still use the 'Imperial System', (the clue is in the name) in tandem with Metric.
You might be surprised that a lot of people my age and younger don't use imperial at all, outside of speed limits and that's just a magnitude anyway
I'm 195cm tall and 70kilos.
Imperials just irritating as we constantly have to go and lookup how many wotsits are in a something.
Even people who "use both" are exactly the same except stone for human weight and feet and inches for human height.
And I doubt they could tell you how many pounds are in a stone and inches in a foot.
@@simonrobbins8357 I think he's trying to suggest that the pound was devalued to the equivalent of 100 old pence, whereas it was actually the old penny was up-valued to 2.4 pence & the pound remained the same. It was quite common back then for a lot of people to believe that way.
The easiest system is the one that you know. For us growing up with LSD, it was easy because we had used it from childhood. A huge price inflation took place under decimalisation. It seemed like monopoly money. I was young then, but old people were very confused by the new pricing. 5p sounded cheap, but it was the same as an old shilling.
Back under Danelaw, the vikings literally wore their currency in the form of arm rings. They would remove the arm ring and cut it up to use as currency, so it is not surprising that this would convert into silver blocks. My dad was convinced they brought in the decimal system just to rip people off, he states that prices went up overnight due to it and that a switch to the Euro would do the same thing.
There were some errors in thst video. There was a 10s note, half a pound (£). so the minimum coins and notes example was wrong. Also although there was a crown it was not in general circulation. The first decimal coins were issued in 1968. In the 1960's the exchange rate from £ to $ was £1 equaled $2.40 so a penny was equal to a cent.
The cost of basics in the 1950's were bread 4d/loaf and milk at 3d/pint.
We still use miles and calculate the fuel consumption in mpg, even if fuel is sold in liters. But take note the imperial gallon is different from the U.S. gallon.
Personally I think the decimization process has been at the expense of the average persons ability to do mental arithmetic. A lot of my generation could tell you the price of a pound weight (16oz) of something when it was priced in £sd for an ounce. And this was all in the days before calculators and smart phones.
When I was a kid, public phone boxes worked off thruppeny bits (3 penny coins)
I recall sixpenny bits (tanners) in the phone boxes! I remember thruppenny bits. I like the old money. (A farthing was before my time but recognisable with it's pretty wren on its reverse)
A ha'pence, (1_coin) a penny (1_coin), tuppence (2_coins), thruppence (1_coin), sixpence (1 tanner - 1_coin)),
one shilling, (1 bob - 1_coin)
a florin (2_shillings - 1_coin),
a half-crown (2_shillings +6_pence - 1_coin)) a crown (5_shillings - 1_coin)),
(I dont recall the half or full sovereign, but I remember the ten shillings note, the ten shillings note, the £1 note, (& the guinea - £1+1_shilling) the £5 note, the £10 note, the £20 note, and rarely seen: the £50 note.
_I_don't_ agree that the old money was "silly" or "ridiculous" and _I_resent_ the implication by the narrator that it was.
I can now say, that (probably) I _hate_ his attitude.
We changed from old money on _17th_February_1971. ... (_not_ the 15th) Yes, the decimalised pounds and pence are easier to count, (but I _still_ like the old monies and their names...)
But now we just have: (in coin)
1_p, 2_p, 5_p, 10_p, 20_p, 50_p, £1_, £2_...
(in notes)
£5_,(a fiver) £10_,(a tenner), £20_, £50_.
End of story. 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨🏴🖖
It was 4 pennies when I was a youngster, the old black press button A or B phones. One inserted the coins, dialled the number or the operator connected one, when the call was answered one pressed button A, if no answer button B to get the money back. One always pressed B on entering the phone box as sometimes the previous user forgot to do so and one could have a call on them.
I was born in England 1962 and remember when they switched over to the decimal system Feb 17 1971, my younger sisters birthday . I have always attributed the old currency to superior math skills.
I remember buttons A and B and using pennies.
I remember the old one penny slotted phone boxes with the 'A' and 'B' buttons, A for Answer and B for a refund.
Tyler, the pound existed before decimal currency. He missed out the 10 shilling (10 bob) note.
As for predecimal currency being complicated to work out. It wasn't if you lived with it. I was six when we switched to the decimal system, but I still remember it clearly. My mum used to wait outside of the sweetshop and joke shop while I went inside with my pocket/birthday/christmas money. I would pick what I wanted that particular day and know how much I needed to hand to the man behind the counter. At six I was very forward when it came to mathematics and have always been able to do complicated maths in my head.
Great vid. I'm feeling very nostalgic now.
Funny how Americans find this complicated but we used pounds, shillings and pence as children with no problem - without calculators. We (Australia) changed to decimal system in 1966.
This is his schtick, does it with everything British
ISTR you divided the pound by 2 to make your dollar, then divided that into 100 cents. typical Britain, we kept the pound, then introduced a ½p !!!
Younger Australians today would find it complicated because it's silly. You found it easy because you grew up with it.
The rest of the world (less 2 countries) feels that way about not using SI units in the USA until you go into science or engineering.
The original Pound was worth 1lb of silver. People used balance scales to check the value of Stirling Silver, the Latin word for Balance or Scales was libra. lots of Balance accounts would use Li to refer to a pound, the money pound originally used this to represent a pound sometimes called a Pound Stirling because of the Stirling Silver. Li was reduced to L with the i being a flourish stroke (originally two strokes) across the letter L giving us £'. A Saxon Coin was worth 1/20th of a Pound was called the Shilling or it's Germanic name "Scilling", a monetary term meaning literally 'twentieth of a pound'. 12 pennies (fenning,) = shilling or /-, each shilling was divided into into 12 pennies or d. Each penny divided into 4 (often cut into 4) called a Farthing or Fourthing.
The original English monetary pound was one Saxon or Tower pound of 350 g of fine silver, which remained the standard for half a millennium until 1346: the sterling standard (0.925 fine) was only adopted in 1526, when £1 became worth barely 153 g of fine silver or 0.474 lb (166 g) of sterling silver. So though £1 was originally 1 lb of silver, £1 sterling was paradoxically never 1 lb sterling (or even half as much)!
The United Kingdom did not seek to adopt the euro as its official currency for the duration of its membership of the European Union (EU), and secured an opt-out at the euro's creation via the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, wherein the Bank of England would only be a member of the European System of Central Banks.
I was a 9 year old living in Edinburgh when decimalisation happened. My only memories of that are how local traders took advantage of the move to inflate the price of sweeties (candy). Rounding errors in a price were always resolved upwards. The great things about there being 12 pennies in a shilling, is that you can easily divide it by 2, 3, 4 and 6. The USA has imperial miles because you were once part of the British Empire.
We use a weird mix between metric and imperial.
Miles and Yards while travelling
Meters etc for measuring
(except height in ft and inch)
Celsius for temperature
Liters for liquids
But Pints for milk and alcohol
Pressure is in both bar and Pascals usually bar for wheel pumps and Pascals for scientific reasons.
So it's a bit weird but hey ho were a weird little island
the guinea is still used today, in british horse racing.
I think this term is used in auction houses too.
@@t.a.k.palfrey3882 i think u are right.
we were usimg decimal in scotland for the first time in 1969, schools were given whole sets of the new coins to teach the children in schools, what it looked like and how to use it, by making change with the new curency, and yes mopney was more complicated than now, but if you could use the old money, you were better at math just by using money every day, maybe thats why we are a smarter generation :).
The main point of the Imperial System was how "divisible" the system was. The Five Shilling Crown coin was the equivalent of an American Dollar when both were approximately the same weight of silver. The Dollar was 100 cents. While the Five Shilling was 240 Farthings, so you could divide it more ways, when pricing smaller items.
I remember my Dad sometimes used to call a crown a dollar and a half crown a half dollar. Not quite sure why though, possibly from the war years, or maybe from betting on horses.
The Guinea was more for auctions, where the extra Shilling was the Auction House's fee.
Just helped keep track of what you're bidding, rather than "23 Pounds and 2 Shillings" its just "22 Guineas".
For reference, British road signage has always used Imperial measurements, Miles, MPH, Yards, Feet & Inches, and I assume weight restrictions were always in Imperial Tons.
I still remember going to the shop for sweets with a threepenny bit or a sixpence.
I still have a thrupenny bit and a shiney sixpence which was my xmas money from xmas 1972
6d got you a Curly-Wurly! Today 2½p probably wouldn't stretch much beyond one of the bits of chocolate that fell on the floor when you bit it!
My father was bank manager and he could add a ledger that had pounds, shilling and pence at the same time - I was in awe of him.
My grandfather, the cheif cashier at a weekly newspaper, could just look at a column of figures (£sd) for a second and give you the total immediately.
I was still in school when "D Day" was implemented. My after school chores involved delivering some groceries to pensioners. They hated the changes and didn't understand the "new" currency at all. I made charts for them all to try to explain each coin and what they were worth in "old money". Prices went up on the change "to compensate". (As if prices were ever going to go down!)
They were being cheated by some unscrupulous people so I did what I could to help out. I must have explained to each of my old ladies dozens of times to try to help. I was treated to so many cups of tea, cakes and biscuits for my trouble. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it! 😉
I was 5 when decimalisation occurred. I remember my Mum having to work out her staff wages with a ready reckoner book. No calculators then! Even when my Mum had dementia in later life her mental arithmatic abilities confounded the doctor. I remember joyfully sailing halfpenny coins (which had a smashing clipper ship design) up and down the kitchen counter, which became the sea. I even fed bread and biscuit crumbs to the wrens on the fathings.
Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda still use the shilling according to Google. Also, the pound as been used since 1489 non stop.
The UK is a bit weird on measurements, we switched from imperial to metric in the 1960s, and the process continued for a couple of decades, but the metrication process didn't apply to all areas of life, nor is it universally used by everyone yet. Distance is probably the major area in most peoples lives where the imperial system is still used, with a majority of british road signs being measured in miles, but it's not uncommon to hear pounds and ounces, especially from older generations who pretty much just refused to fully adjust to the metric system. Probably one of the weirder measurements of weight you'll hear in the UK is the "stone" which equates to 14 pounds, or around 6.4kg and that is often used to measure body weight. Also as a side note, the imperial system used by America isn't actually the imperial system, you guys use US customary units, both branched off from the system Britain used before switching to Imperial in 1826.
My Dad used to sing: Rule Britannia, two tanners make a bob, three make 1 & 6 (one shilling and sixpence) and four 2 bob (two shillings). Never understood a word, because I was two years old when it went out of circulation and we changed to decimal.
I like that Terry and I'm old enough to understand it
I’m 47, so born after decimalisation and by the time I was using money, most people were used to it. But from what I’ve been told, it wasn’t so much that it was complicated, it’s that it people had a sense of how much their money was worth, but suddenly that was changed, and while £1 kept its value, it was the value of pence that changed, and considering that things were cheaper back then, it was not uncommon to spend just a few pence if you’re only buying a few daily items, like bread or milk.
For example, let’s say you wanted to buy a tin of baked beans and they were priced at 6p (yes, that’s what they roughly cost in the early 70s). If you understood decimal system, you’ll know that’s 6% of your pound. But if you’re used to imperial, where there are 240 pennies to a pound, then “sixpence” is 2.5% of your pound. So that tin of beans is more than twice as expensive as you think it is. And it goes without saying that some shopkeepers took advantage of this, overpricing things because older customers, with their brains still set to imperial, think it’s cheaper.
Well, that is what I was brought up with in the 60s. I can remember it. Still didn't improve my dyscalculia. We were given little booklets with examples of decimal coins and, of course, I spent them. My family were running a general store at the time and it took quite some time for our customers - mostly elderly - to accept the new coins, and they kept querying the change, but they got used to it in time as we all did. In the end, it all depends what you're brought up with. Currency is, after all, part of your encultured furniture and familiarity helps.
I loved our old currency, it bought a lot more. When we went decimal, prices literally doubled overnight, and we steadfastly refused to join the Single currency, Thank Goodness.👵🏴🌹🌹
Not exactly true but prices got rounded up rather than rounded down.
Not true. You, like most people don't know the correct meaning of the word 'literally' .
We've always used miles and have NEVER used kilometres. We still use feet, inches, pints, gallons, pounds and stones alongside the metric system (except kilometres.) Fahrenheit is the only imperial measurement that is now obsolete. Celsius is far more straightforward.
The old Pound Sterling is similar to the Imperial System of measurement wherein 1 foot is equivalent to 12 inches. The US Dollar is similar to the Metric System of measurement wherein 1 meter is equivalent to 100 centimeters.
Difference between US Dollar and the old Pound Sterling:
US Dollar:
$1 = 10 dimes
1 dime = 10 cents
$1 = 100 cents
Coins:
Half Dollar = 5 dimes (rarely used)
Quarter Dollar = 2 dimes and 5 cents (25¢)
1 dime = 10 cents
5 cents
1 cent
Old Pound Sterling:
£1 = 20 Shillings
1 Shilling = 12 pence
£1 = 240 pence
Coins:
Crown = 5 shillings (5/-) rarely used
Half Crown = 2 shillings and 6 pence (2/6)
Florin = 2 shillings (2/-)
One Shilling = 1/-
Six pence = 6d
Three pence = 3d
One penny = 1d
Half penny = ½d
Farthing = ¼d
The Farthing coin was demonetised effective 1-January 1961 due to inflation.
The Half penny coin was demonetised effective 1-August 1969 in preparation for decimalisation.
Notations:
£4/8/9 (4 Pounds, 8 Shillings and 9 pence)
£4/8/- (4 Pounds and 8 Shillings w/o penny)
88/9 (88 Shillings and 9 Pence)
8/9 (8 Shillings and 9 pence)
8/- (8 Shillings w/o penny)
21/- (21 Shillings or historically called 1 Guinea)
Adding prices is quite challenging because you should have memorised the 12 Times Table to be able to add prices.
For example, you bought 5 items at a store:
Item#1 is 15 Shillings and 7 Pence
Item#2 is 16 Shillings and 8 Pence
Item#3 is 17 Shillings and 9 Pence
Item#4 is 18 Shillings and 10 Pence
Item#5 is 19 Shillings and 11 Pence
15/7
16/8
17/9
18/10
19/11
Total: 88/9 (88 Shillings and 9 Pence)
Or
£4/8/9 (4 Pounds, 8 Shillings and 9 Pence)
If you gave a £10 banknote to the cashier, the change would be £5/11/3.
Subtracting is quite easier:
If the total price is £4 and the cash given is £10, the change would be £6.
If the total price is £4/8/- and the cash given is £10, the change would be £5/12/- (since there are 20 Shillings in a Pound)
If the total price is £4/8/9 and the cash given is £10, the change would be £5/11/3 (since there are 12 pence in a Shilling)
From 775 AD to 14-February 1971, a Pound was equivalent to 20 Shillings; each Shilling (sometimes called "bob") is equivalent to 12 pence (12d).
£1 = 240d
"d" means Denarius.
Effective 15-February 1971, the value of each Shilling was reduced from 12 pence (12d) to 5 new pence (5p).
20 Shillings × 5p = 100p
The Shilling lost 7 pence (7d) or 58.33% of its original value. To mitigate the situation, the Royal Mint minted ½ new penny coins (½p). Since 12 won't fit into 5, duplicate values cannot be avoided:
½p = 1d
1p = 2d & 3d
1½p = 4d
2p = 5d
2½p = 6d
3p = 7d
3½p = 8d
4p = 9d & 10d
4½p = 11d
5p = 1 shilling
The new half penny coin (½p) was demonetised on 31-December 1984. I think the government already had intention to not include the new half penny coin (½p) from the beginning of the decimalisation plan. They minted the new half penny coin (½p) as the ugliest coin and majority of the people don't want to use it. It was even ignored in banking transactions. Because of its tiny size and ugly design (unlike the pre-decimal half penny which was beautiful), most people perceive it as having no value. In street markets, most of the vendors don't want to use the new half penny (½p) in pricing their items or products. They rounded-up the prices to the nearest new penny. When the new half penny coin (½p) was introduced on 15-February 1971 (Decimal Day), the government said that it is just a temporary coin and it will soon be demonetised once it lost its value due to inflation. The government's words sounded more prophetic than they ever thought; the 1970s was the worst decade for Britain due to yearly double-digit inflation (skyrocketing to 25% in 1975).
Bermuda Islands had the most logical method of decimalisation, the 240 pence became 240 cents.
One Bermudian Pound is equivalent to two Bermudian Dollars and forty cents (£BM1 = $BM2.40).
the old money is only complicated for first time users but for those using it everyday of their lives, it is not. Entry of Britain to EEC pressured Harold Wilson to decimalise the currency. His mistake was - he decimalised the sub-units of the currency instead of the main unit of currency. Since a Pound is equivalent to 240 pence (240d), the most logical method of decimalisation is by having a new main unit of currency equivalent to 100 pence (100d). What Harold Wilson did was - he retained the Pound as the main unit of currency and shrank its sub-units from 240 pence (240d) to 100 new pence (100p). Result: inflation
When you combine pre-decimal money with food sold by the Pound & Ounce (16 ounces per Pound). The math/maths is quite complicated and before the time of calculators there was the occasional weighing scales with a printed price per pound scale were a help if you were weighing some items. Then you had to make up a total to charge the customer with shillings and pence, including half pennies! My dad could do it, he’d been a greengrocer for 20 odd years so was experienced with pre-decimal coins. Mind you, Mental Arithmetic was a well taught subject for all ages. Even in secondary/high school we were still using pre-decimal money and the Imperial science measures. It wasn’t until much later when the Metric system of measures occurred and made things much more easy,
W've always used the Pound £, for or currency, in February 1971 we went decimal but we still the £ as a base for our currency.
I still prefer miles per gallon to litres per kilometer, and as our pumps now show fuel in pence per litre I find myself converting this to gallons in my head while filling up as you only have to divide by 4.546 to get the gallons, and then divide the total cost by the answer to get the price per gallon.
I have known people who were not classed as high achievers at school who could still calculate exactly how much they would win on a £2 bet on the horses at odds of 13:2 if it came in 1st, 2nd or 3rd
@@GSD-hd1yh I agree with you. I made an Excel spreadsheet that I entered my fuel in one column with the cost in £ in another mileage in a third i converted Kilometres t Miles in another, then a column to calculate my MPG. The idea was this new car would have a great history, in the end I didn't sell the car, I ad an illness and gave it to my nephew!
When I was young there were still farthings. "One and 3 three" was one shillng threepence and three farthings.
In America, you have the quarter, dime, the nickel and penny, in the past you has the Eagle and the Buffalo as well as other denominations, just as complex as ours, but we worked in base 12 not 10, as that can be counted on the hand, even young children could do currency calculations quickly, it's called familiarity.
What they didn’t mention was that from 1971 to 1984, there was also a decimal half-penny coin (commonly referred to as the “half-p”. It was discontinued when it ended up being virtually worthless.
I still have the half penny coin!😂
When I was a boy, nearly 80 years ago, the average 5 y.o. could work this out!
I still have a few Florins around here somewhere, and some old pennies.
You used to be able to still spend the Florins as if they were 10 pence coin, before they changed the size of the coins.
The video you're watching is showing you the latest versions of the coins, which is why they look so different, especially in size, but when decimalisation first happened in 1971, 10p was just the same as a Florin with a new face on it, and the 5p was just a shilling with a new face, so you could use them interchangeable. This was to help ease people into the new system, so your wallet full of old money wasn't useless.
While they say the there pence and six pence were discontinued, Yes, but you could still just spend them as if they were a 1 and 2 pence coin, but while the Florin and Shilling would likely remain in circulation, the 3, 6 and other discontinued coins would be removed.
Also, he barely mentioned 20p coin, he didn't mention the new 50p coin.
I can still remember using the "farthing". I used to like them with the wren on the back. I, like most people used to the system, never had any trouble working it all out. I miss half crowns and florins etc. Sounds so much more interesting than "pence".
I am 77 so I was 24 when decimal currency came to us. The adjustment was difficult for many older people, much in the same way that US citizens resist the metric system of length or weight. Our brains were made to remember all the odd numbers and we were adept at working out all sorts of arithmatic in our heads. 16 ounces = 1 pound, 14 pounds = 1 stone, 8 stone = 1 hundredweight, 20 hundredweight = 1 ton. Not to mention grains and drams as smaller than ounces. You in the US missed out the stones in this set of weights. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 22 yards = 1 chain, 10 chains = I furlong, 8 furlongs = 1 mile. Not to mentions, rods, poles and perches or fathoms and leagues. I need not go into volumes. In science at primary (elementary) school upwards, we had to learn the metric units too - grams and kilograms, centimeters and meters, centilitres and litres. My mental arithmetic is just as dast as using a calculator after the brain ecercises imposed on our immature brains.
We had 5 mins mental arithmetic every morning at junior school; kept you on your toes!
We were never asked if we wanted to go metric to me they stole one part of a culture and we should go back to imperial. £ S D was not that difficult because money had value most things were bought with coins lower than £. When £ coins came out they brought out coin holders not to lose pound coins as they were worth £10 today.
In Aus we started converting In 1970, it took awhile, i learnt both, i don't remember all of it...
Strangely a farthing in the king james bible there were 8 farthings in a penny(?)...
@@R0d_1984 Were you asked? Metrification is not for your benefit but to get the cheapest worker.
Correction 1966.
The pound sterling (currency) is the pound sterling (currency) because the pound sterling (currency) used to literally be one pound (weight) of sterling (silver).
Centuries back, like in the 1200s or whatever it was, the king passed a law saying that 1lb of sterling silver had to produce 240 silver pennies - or exactly one pound in currency. And if a pound of silver was provided, then the equivalent weight of shillings also had to be made from it. So 20 shillings had to equal 1lb silver of weight.
As a result, British coinage was sterling silver right up until about 1920.
Because the coins were silver some less than scrupulous people used to shave little bits from the coins edges. This was the origin of devaluing the currency.
3:50 - ultimately, it's based on the system devised by Charlemagne during the 8th century. Most European countries used similar systems until the 18th and 19th centuries
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd
Race horses are still traded in Guineas £1.05. He missed out that we had 1/2p coins before and after decimalisation and until the 1950s 1/4p coins as well. When I was a kid you could buy all kinds of loose sweets (candy) for less than a penny - best value were Flying Saucers which were 8 for a penny or 4 for a half penny.
I’m a boomer and much preferred the old system. It made the division so much easier. Try dividing 100 pence by 3. It cannot be done. Dividing the 12 pence in a shilling by 3 - easy. Then 20 shillings = £1 so 240 pence = £1. It started hard to find a number better than 240 when it comes to division.
Our whole counting system is stupid. The only reason we count in 10s is because we have 10 fingers. Imagine if we had 12 fingers:-
123456789xy10. How much better that would be.
Just ask Al Murray.
That's not why we use 10's. The main benefit of the decimal system being in 10's is it scales up 10, 100, 1000 making multiplication/division easier, you just move the decimal point. As for 240, that is mainly a benfit of it's size, though there is something gained as it is an even number you can divide by 3. With 100 though, you still can use 2's, 4's, 5's, 10's, 20's, 25's and 50's - you only lose 3's, 8's and 12's in terms of useful numbers. A currency with 3 different base numbers - base 12 and base 20 is not helpful though.
@@graham-hood Shifting the point to multiply or divide by the base number works with any base, not just 10. With computers it is common to use hexadecimal (base 16) numbers, which use 0-9 plus A-F to give 16 different symbols - in this case a shift of one position represents multiplying or dividing by 16 rather than 10, but the principal is the same.
@@graham-hood I dont think you understand me. We could still use the 10s system, but better if we had 12 numbers up to ten - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,X, Y, 10.
Shops used to have a scale instead of a cash register, everything in the end worked by weight, 240 copper pennies weighed a literal pound in weight and there was another scale for silver coins. It was quite clever in a way because it didn't really matter all that much what the coins were named as in the end they would be weighed.
3 old pennies weighed one ounce; so 240 old pennies weighed 80 ounces, not 1 lb, but 5x16 oz or 5 lb.
@@arthurcrown3063 Yeah I realized later I got the numbers wrong about which scale did what but I do know for sure it all made sense when physically weighed rather than counted.
We're a mess of units in the UK. Small distances are measured in metres, but longer ones in miles, especially when driving. People's height tends to be given in feet and inches. For weights it's grams and kilograms, except for people where you measure in stones and pounds. Fluids are in litres, except milk and beer, where you measure in pints.
And it's the best system especially when Americans and Europeans are arguing about the metric system we're just like eff it use it all
My cooker demands Centigrade; recipes call for grammes nowadays (except for my cookbooks, all in real units), but babies are born in lbs and ounces and I still weigh myself on a proper scale in stone and lbs.
The 20 pence was not introduced until 1981 and there was a half penny in circulation until 84. The half penny was amazing as a kid as we could buy half penny sweets. 10p went a long way
Originally it was a POUND of silver , the number 240 was chosen for the number of ways you can divide it up. All predecimal currency was weighted such that any amount of coins adding up to a pound WEIGHED a pound so if you had a lot you could just weigh it out rather than count every coin.
@Tyler. You still buy and sell horses in guineas. And we still use miles on our road signs in the UK
I’m part British blood on my Dad’s side. When I went to England in June 1980, they had what they called the ha’penny for the half pence.
It took time for some coins to be phased out. I remember when I was a kid, sixpences were still around, but post decimilisation were worth 2.5 pence, rather than six. It was eventually withdrawn from use in 1980. The half penny stayed around till 1984, when it was also withdrawn from circulation. But he spoke about the 20p coin as if it was introduced when we went decimal in 1971, but it wasn't. It wasn't introduced until 1982.
It worked because at the time we used imperial weights.
So if something was 1 shilling per pound weight and you wanted a quarter pound it was quick to work out.
240 pence divides multiple ways without remainders
I don't remember seeing any road signs showing the distance in anything other than miles here in the UK! When the currency changed everything was rounded up to the nearest new penny. We had to get used to using the old shillings as a 10 pence, and the sixpence was used as a 5 pence piece, etc, until the old money was gradually removed when paid into banks.
In India we had decimal currency, then my family emigrated to England in 1961. I had to learn the UK system. Pounds, Schilling, and pence. I live in Spain now and use the euro. I have travelled in Europe before the euro and had to cope with different currencies. Travel broadens the mind. You have to be very adaptable in the world!
India had 16 annas to a rupee before they went decimal.
The last Crowns struck for circulation were around 1900. There were a few issues for commemorating coronations etc, after that but it was really just halfcrowns from then on, which were very popular and sometimes nicknamed half a dollar!
It wasn't as immediate a change as the video makes it sound, hence why people thought it was complicated. The new 50p coin had already replaced the 10s note a couple of years before decimalisation, and the half-crown had also been withdrawn (the crown was never in regular circulation). When decimalisation happened, the new 5p and 10p coins were made to be the same size and value as the old 1s and 2s coins so that they could be used interchangeably, and the 6d coin remained in use with a value of 2½p. The ½d, 1d and 3d coins were withdrawn, and new ½p, 1p, and 2p coins were introduced.
Further changes happened in the 1980s and 1990s: the new ½p and remaining old coins were withdrawn, the 5p, 10p, and 50p coins were reduced in size, and new 20p, £1, and £2 coins were introduced.
That's also the reason that most UK coins have Queen Elizabeth II's face on: every single denomination changed during her reign. Some King Charles III coins have been introduced, but it's a slow process. There's also talk of withdrawing the 1p and 2p coins entirely.
I used it and it was perfectly understandable. Arithmetic was easy with a little practise, and if you doubt that just consider how easy and quickly darts players work out their scores and what they need to finish. also, the were machines that would count money, in volume, e.g. in banks and shops had mechancial tills that would add up your 'shop'.
Also, a someone who worked in IT for nigh on 40 years, computerisation of this was easy. There were functions within the programming language, especially business languages, to do whatever was necessary. The trick, as now, is to not lose fractions, e.g divide 10 pennies by 13 you get 0.69, but you can't round that to zero because you can't make money disappear so you need to decide what to do with it.
Anyway
A shilling got its name from Schilling in Austria, a place where historically there was silver mining.
A Florin got its name from Florence in Italy, a place known for it's silver riches.
All this was done in the name of modernisation. More likely it was done by the Euro enthusiasts to align with Europe.
The big problem was the sheer size of these coins. And with inflation, pennies would quickly become worth more in scrap metal than in its face value. Even so, today inflation has ensured pennies and two pennies, five pennies are pretty much gone.
I remember using the sixpence when I was little and value was 2 1/2p. People still refer to Bob mainly for the use of 50p(10 Bob). Most of our cars have miles for speed and distance and road signs display yards (1 yard = 3 feet).
Oh and 1/2p was still in use until 1984 and the £1 note started to get removed from circulation in 1983.
There was also a 10 Shilling note, rust coloured along with the farthing with a bird on the back (which had gone out by the time I was aware of money)
Yes, my roomie at junior school used the Welsh term "chwigian" (spelling ?) for ten shillings. He told me it was an abbreviation of "six twenties", which is 120, which was the number of pennies in 10/-.
The bird was a Wren.
No idea where he got the km on road signs part. It's still all in miles
I was born in 1975, so post-decimalisation, but the old Shilling and Florin (Two Shilling) coins did remain in circulation for a long time, as the new 5p and 10p coins were at the time the same size and weight as the old ones - meaning you'd sometimes look at your change and see King George's face rather than Queen Elizabeth's.
The 5p was made smaller in 1990, and the 10p in 1992, and, after a brief period of overlap, the older, larger coins were withdrawn.
Also, the 20p wasn't created until 1982, so was not immediately after decimalisation.
In the UK we used the Pound Sterling (based on Silver), in the US you used to have the Silver Dollar.
Both currencies where the main unit of currency was linked to Silver.
Only until the 18th century (England) or 1900 (the US): thereafter the standard was gold, with ultimately disastrous results.
So in the old days a pound was a large ammount of money so most people only had coinage. As far as im told the term “shill” comes from “taking kings the Shilling” which is a term used for joining the monarchs navy/ army. When i was young we called 10p a shilling as slang before 20p was reissued. 1/2 p were kept in circulation until the economy caught up.
Sixpences were my favourite coin (closely followed by the thrup'ny bit) - small and shiny and immensely satisfying to hold and count - they were also traditionally put in the mixture for Christmas puddings, and it was exciting if you found the sixpence in your portion of pudding on Christmas day!
Most old measures used 12 as 12 can be divided by 1, 2, 3. 4, 6, 12, the old currencies was also associated with pounds, ounces, and inches, foot
The UK used and still uses miles, pounds, pints and inches and exported it to the US. It was from them that we had the name the Imperial System as opposed to the Metric System. If it hadn’t come from the UK and originated from the US, it would have been strange to call it the Imperial System.
On that note, if it’s shocking that the Brits back then baulked at the new decimal currency system and its mind boggling that they found it complicated and confusing, just imagine how the world views Americans as they resist the Metric System with its base-10 system. If the UK could simply set a date to switch over, maybe the US should do so too.
Different purchases were made with different kinds of coin. For instance if you wanted to buy a loaf of bread you would use a copper half penny or penny but if you wanted to buy a horse you’d pay in silver pounds, and if you’re buying a ship you’re going to pay in gold guineas. So this made accounting much easier than it seems at first.
As someone who who as lived through both systems let me say there were certain advandages in the old system. One being, that is some what overlooked, is the number of times an old pound could be evenly divided. Example, a third of an old pound was six shillings and eight pence, a new pound it is thirty three and a third pence. Whatever a third of a penny looks like. One of the disadvantages of the old system was in computing. To have a single base of 100 is much easier to programme with than several bases of 12 and 240.
I worked in Boots before decimalisation. We had to work out the correct amount of change to give, the till didn't do it. So if something was £2 6shillings 11pence and a £5 note was tendered, we first took 1 penny from the till, then 13 shillings and then £2, counting up to £5.
In Reading Town centre they have a pub called The Three Guineas, I'm guessing back then, pints used to cost around that or something.
Hardly; tuppence or threepence more like; gin for 1d and so on. A guinea was a gold coin worth 21s
We were all made to remember the whole imperial measurement system by heart - it was printed on the back of all exercise books.
12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 22 yards=1 chain, 10 chains = 1 furlong, 8 furlongs =1 mile. 1 chain by 1 furlong = 1 acre. A fluid ounce is the volume of 1 ounce of water, 20 fluid ounces = 1 pint in the UK (16 fluid ounces in a US pint), 8 pints = 1 gallon, 9 gallons = 1 firkin. Then we have 16 ounces= 1 pound, 14 pounds = 1 stone, 8 stone = 1 hundredweight, 20 hundredweight = 1 ton.
BTW their is an imperial mass unit called the slug - much used in aerodynamics when done in imperial measure.
The coinage was actually just child's play - not difficult at all.
There were a lot of coins below the pound, because a pound of silver was and is worth a lot of money. That should be fairly obvious. Even as a kid, in the early '70s, a ha'penny could buy you 6 Mojos, or Teddy Bears (sweets), so there was still value in small denominations. Disconnected from precious metals, money is easily rationalised by decimalisation. The slang persisted from the old money, to the new. People my age and older might call a 50p coin, '10 bob'. It confuses the hell out of the young 'uns, while being obvious to everyone else. We did keep some of the old coins initially, but they were phased out over time. A sixpence became two and a half pence, a shilling 5p, a florin (2 bob/shillings) became 10p. Shillings and florin remained in circulation until the coins changed size.
When the UK went decimal many coins continued in use, the new 5p was the same size and value as the shiling I'm not sure when the old shilings stopped being used but I suspect it was well into the 80s (confusing for non natives as the inscriptions on the coins made no sense in the new money). Meanwhile there was also the half new penny and the 6d (old pence is marked with a d) continued in use as a 2.5p coin. Oh and don't forget the word pence is the plural of penny. I suspect that part of the reason for keeping the old coins in use was to reduce the cost both to the Royal Mint and to the vending/gaming machine industry.
My grandma who died in 2015 never came to terms with the decimal currency, she always tried to convert prices to what she called ‘old money’. Also the use of miles is still very common in the UK. For example all speed limit signs on roads and highways refer to miles/hour, not km/hour. And we have, of course, the pint (beer).
I can think of quite a few people who use the phrase "What's that in old money?", but usually when referring to something like weight, volume, length etc.
The time of predecimal currency was simple to us at the time, it was all we knew. The money was referred to as Lsd, L for £, s for shillings and d for pennies. It also meant that we had to learn more complicated maths in order to master our money. Not a bad thing.
We had £1 notes and 10 shilling notes (half a £1). Then there was a half crown, 2shillings and sixpence. The florin, 2shillings, the shilling, the sixpence, the threpenny bit,the penny, the ha'penny (half a penny) and the farthing ( a quarter of a penny). All the other coins he mentioned were not common currency when I was a kid.
I'm not sure when the farthing disappeared, but as prices rose they no longer had value to purchase anything.
The farthings were very pretty tiny copper coins with a picture of a wren on the tails side.
The ha'penny was bigger and copper also, and eventually disappeared like the farthing. The penny was a quite large copper coin. The threpenny bit was copper and quite small but thicker and had angled edges. We didn't actually have crowns, but we did have half crowns, silver coloured, otherwise known as two and six pence.
Two shillings and one shilling were both siver colour.
The ten shilling note was a pinkybrown, and the £1 note was green. The fiver (£5 note) was blue. There was also a tenner (£10 note), and a £50 note !
When they changed to decimal currency my Nanna was very old, she never mastered the new coins and constantly tried to convert prices to old money in her head. She became very distressed about it all and pretty much gave up on life. She died soon after. I think a lot of elderly people also struggled with it, a lot of prices went up because we had less coin options for small prices.
Guineas are still used in livestock sales- particularly horses, and prize money of horse races is often in guineas. In 'new money' a guinea is £1.05
People thought it was too complicated because they were trying to constantly switch between the two currencies in their heads in order to work out how much something was (rather like converting from dollars to pounds if you visit the UK). As a kid, I HATED doing money sums because I couldn't get used to working in 12s and 20's. Then we stopped doing 'money sums' for a year or so in the runup to decimalisation. After 1971 it was so straightforward for kids my age (I was 9 years old when we changd over).
Mistake in video.(15:39)
1 shilling = 5 new pence not 20p
We kept the shilling and 2 shilling coins, but they where now 5p and 10p.
The 20p coin was added later than 1971.
8:57. bang on. for example in 1970 a pint of milk was about 5 pence. so having a six pence coin really handy. also guinea wasn't so the shops could scam you out of another shilling it was because guinea was a denomination used in finance, auctions and betting. That extra shilling would be the middleman's commision. e/g something sells at auction for 100 guinea that is £105 the seller gets £100 and the auctioneer gets £5.
I remember the cutover day 15 Feb 1971
we started to cutover to the new coins and notes ~1968
10/- became the 50p. shilling & florin just changed to the 5p & 10p same physical sizes.
Crown and Half Crown had gone, well before that.
The 'jingle' was "use your own pennies in sixpenny lots"
ie 2½p was the closest new equivalent to the old 6d (6d or 2½p was one fortieth of a pound.
Most EU countries, but not all, use the Euro.
2/- is a 10th of a pound, so 10p. 2/- is 24d - 240d in the Pound.
i was almost 10yo in 1971, but still remember.
Technically we also use Furlongs in horse racing still and have acres of land, Feet & Inches are also still used, Imperial still exists to this day in some form
The best thing for me was the way prices of things depended on the product. The old, pre-decimal system, used pounds, shillings and pence. But shoes (for instance) were usually priced in shillings. So a pair of shoes would be say, forty two shillings a pair, (two pounds, two shillings). Another product would be in the standard “LSD” (pounds, shillings and pence) and cheap products in pence only. Say 18 pence and that could also be shown as one and six. Foreigners couldn’t cope at all. And that’s before we get into quineas!!!
Its always been MPH in UK . if you buy a car or bike from europe or japan you normally have to change the speedo from KPH to MPH . Most speedos tell you both anyway . The only people in the UK who measure distance in metric are runners cos 10k sounds better than 6 miles
We used miles. Old people still can use inches, feet, yards plus the metric system. Also, pounds and ounces. We have pints and gallons ( but not as the Americans sizes). But not seen any kilometres signs in the UK
The half pence was still kept after decimalisation, albeit with a new coin until 1984. The old sixpence was revalued as two and a half pence and was still used until 1980.
When doing wood work over here in the UK. I'll guess in Imperial. Then switch to metric for prices measurements.
The guniea has been misrepresented here. Things at auction were sold in gunieas, the seller got the pounds the auction house got the shillings as thier cut. Also horses are still sold in them but now pounds go to the seller and the shillings (worth 5p in decimal) goes to the groom, stable person etc.