This question quotes Terry Prattchett as:
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
Is this a fair comparison with its inference that British currency was significantly more complex than decimal currency?
Or is it simple a matter of l...
In Europe, decimal currencies only emerged during/after the French Revolution. Duodecimal currencies in 1800 were the norm, not the exception. Most were based on Roman coinage.
@MarkJohnson: Yes; likely because the approximate value of silver to copper was 12:1 for most of the Medieval period. If you'd like to build an answer with that, be my guest. You are also welcome to borrow any part of the chart below in any such answer.
As a 13 year old and a year in Ireland, I found returning to decimal currency more confusing, since the numbers were bigger. The smaller units of 12/20 somehow seemed simpler. So I would say for those that used it, it didn't seem confusing or complicated.
Lindybeige has a piece on Pounds, shillings, and pence: a history of English coinage in which it starts to make a lot more <strike>cents</strike> sense. Two key points: 240 pence to the pound makes it very easy to divide because 240 is highly composite, and that (for a period) a pound's worth of coins weighed a pound making it very easy to count and hard to cheat.
As a US child with a mother reading British children' literature to me, it really didn't take long to figure out the whole pounds/shillings/pence even without ever seeing it in action.
You are all smart boys, but not everyone is so smart.... I remember Brazil's inflationary times when we had to pay thousands at the bakery. Less educated people visibly had to spend more time to simpler tasks such as checking the bakery change because it was in thousands instead of unit values. "How much is $5000,00 - $3700,00" was already harder for them than "$5,00 - $3,70", specially with old notes stamped with new values mixed with new notes and coins. I guess that on the imperial system they would have to trust others to buy stuff, at least for larger values or unusual coins.
@CMonsour The original system was Roman in origin. Due to coinage debasement, a Novus denarius was introduced in 735 (Carolingian).
@CMonsour To state this differently: The Romans introduced both the coinage and distance measurements to Britain. In 1593, the English statute mile was changed to 8 furlongs (5280 feet), instead of the original Roman 5000 feet.
"The original system was Roman in origin"`- I have believed this for about a twentieth as long as the Roman empire existed.- libra, solidus, denarius (obvious, innit?), but this page claims that "The pounds, shillings and pence system has a tenuous link with Roman currency, but it was the invention of a French King, Pepin the Short, in AD 755". -->
--> Quora agrees and says that it was Europe-wide, which explains why a French king rearranged British currency (for small values of "British", as the mathematicians say, given that there wasn't even an England in those days).
@chrylis-cautiouslyoptimistic- "Are you familiar with Terry Pratchett's work as a satirist?"`- did he write anything else? ;-) I came here to ask exactly the same thing. OP, buy the Discworld books. Now! All of them! Your life is, as yet, incomplete
@MawgsaysreinstateMonica No, it not obvious, since coins based on gold or silver retained their value long after the Empire no longer existed. That the difference between Commodity and Fiat money. Also the value between the the silver and gold fluctuated greatly. Only the relation 12/20 in silver can be considered soley Carolingian. The coins themselfs Roman.
@MarkJohnson The British system of length measurements was changed in 1593 to make it more decimal. The basic unit is the length of a cricket pitch. Ten cricket pitches = 1 furlong. Ten square cricket pitches = 1 acre. Land surveyors never bothered with feet and inches but preferred "chains" and "links" - 1 cricket pitch = 1 chain = 100 links.
@alephzero Actually it had more to due with the acre (area of one chain by one furlong) than with decimals. Since property areas were known (due to taxation), it simplified the calculation of road distances. Weights and Measures Acts (UK) - 16th century: 'A Mile shall contain eight Furlongs, every Furlong forty Poles, and every Pole shall contain sixteen Foot and an half.'
It may be of interest that Britain took its first faltering steps to decimalisation in 1849 when the two-shilling coin bore the legend "One tenth of a pound". The first "real" 10p coin was issued in 1967, and full decimalisation happened in 1971. Perhaps Pratchett was right; perhaps the British are merely conservative.
@MarkJohnson I used to think that, too, and it burned me, and now I know better. Yes, the words come from Roman words for various coins, but the Carolingians instituted them as units of account fixed at the familiar 12 and 20 ratios. The Romans did not use those ratios, nor any fixed ratio over centuries, since their words described coins, whose composition they liked to monkey with.
@MarkJohnson To make matters more confusing, LSD wasn't the exclusive system for accounting in England until some time had passed. For example, JC Holt in his book on Magna Carta, quotes primary sources for various fees (e.g., for marriages and wardships) in John's reign, and the amounts are almost always in (non-standard) marks that appear to be equivalent to 13s 4d.
@CMonsour Most of the coins actually didn't have a name minted on them and represented only an amount of pennies based on their silver content. The testoon (as the shilling was then known as) fell from the original amount of 12d to 6d between 1544 and 1551. Only after a reform during Elizabeth I reign (then called shilling) did it return to 12d. France later went though a similar process.
Discussion on question by Pieter Geer…
Discussion on question by Pieter Geer…