Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "Predecimal Currency: The Nightmare in Your Pocket" video.

  1. Peter (the Great) was a great modernizer.
    2
  2. It is from the Roman "denarius," which was a fraction of a pound of silver. The fraction varied in Roman times, but came to mean a hundredth in modern times.
    2
  3. Most (US) Americans never give British money a moment's thought.
    1
  4. The main reason for decimalization is simplifying the arithmetic when multiplication is required. That is why surveyors who use US units use feet, tenths, and hundredths.
    1
  5. It all depends on what calculations you are doing. Handling money, generally (beyond everyday commerce), requires a lot of multiplication. That is why a decimaluzed system is preferable. When measuring in US *or Imperial) units, this can be done simply by sticking to one unit. For example, surveyors use feet, tenths, and hundredths. Machinists use inches and thousandths.
    1
  6. In the United States we still use "d" for penny in one context: nail size. A tenpenny nail is 10d.
    1
  7. People could still call a 20-pence coin a "shilling," if it were useful. A "fifth" might be more appropriate, though.
    1
  8. Incorrect use of the term "base," one of my pet peeves. It is decimalized currency, not base ten.
    1
  9. In fact, the United States has had decimalized money from its beginning. However, in coinage, the most commonly used coin is the quarter (dollar), not the dime.
    1
  10. In fact, we are bimetral in the United States. We adopted the Metric System in 1866, before any other English-speaking country, and we use it in many ways. We just don't use it exclusively. Nobody claims it is hard to understand, we just don't see any point to conversion for most ordinary purposes.
    1
  11. If you have enough of it it, it can be.
    1
  12. In the United States, common scales for commerce generally give pounds and hundredths.
    1
  13. The United States has never used the Imperial System.
    1
  14. We (in the USA) got the foot and rod from Britain, of course. The rod was for surveying.
    1
  15. Cash registers everywhere started changing in the 1970s, after the invention of the microcomputer. A lot of other things changed as well.
    1
  16. Anytime you have to multiply, the old system is definitely more complicated. In finance, multiplication comes up a lot.
    1
  17. That is, in fact, what was done in Roman coinage. A pound of silver was too heavy, and too large a unit of money, so smaller coins were a division of a pound.
    1