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Footnote from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: "NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique
by gandalfian 8y ago
Footnote from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:
"NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:
Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and one Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated."
- robotresearcher 8y agoAnd now five cents is a nickel, two nickels are a dime, five nickels a quarter, four quarters a dollar, a hundred dollars a benjamin, ten benjamins a grand, etc. Like now, most of that is nicknames and people didn’t use them in combinations. For reference, the actual currency was pounds, shillings and pence. Ratios of 1, 1/20, and 1/12 respectively. In modern decimal London, 20 pounds is a pony and 100 is a ton. We still have the colorful shorthand.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoYeah US money was on the old "another coin for every doubling". But base-ten doesn't admit to that very well. So we used 1-2-5-10-20-50. We had 1 penny, 2 penny (gone), nickle, dime, quarter(? where is the 20-cent piece?), 50-cent-piece (no name for this?), dollar, two-dollar (gone, then back, then gone again), $10, $20, $50, $100
- howard941 8y ago> 50-cent-piece (no name for this?) That's a half-dollar Unrelated to your post is two bits == quarter, if memory serves me it's by way if Spain.
- 0x445442 8y agoYour memory serves... Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar.
- dredmorbius 8y agoSpanish real, pieces of eight. Two bits == two pieces == one quarter.
- njarboe 8y agoFrom when you would literally cut up the single coin into bits to use for smaller payments.
- dredmorbius 8y agoI'm not finding aany substantiation of that. The coin was actually 8 reals, not 1 real as I'd indicated above. Also known as a peso or Spanish dollar. Peso: "a weight" https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso
- njarboe 8y agoYou are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would guess and this site states that they did get cut up from time to time to make change[1]. [1]https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cafard 8y agoAnthony Burgess somewhere or other pointed out the superior divisibility of the old English system: 3,2, and 5 as prime factors for the pound, 3, 2, and 7 for the guinea.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI've often thought, base 12 would have made a much better counting system.
- abakker 8y agoAs a woodworker, this is one of my prime reasons for still liking inches. Of course, fractional inches are kind of terrible once you get past 16ths, but, that's what decimal inches are for! (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.)
- Jedd 8y ago> (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.) This is what normal people do with metric / decimal. Everything's in thousands (/1000's) of a metre -- ie. millimetres, or mm. When you can no longer differentiate the notches on your rule ... you're accurate enough.
- dredmorbius 8y agoPence, pounds, and guineas were actually three independent monetary systems: copper, silver, and gold. This reflects other multi-metallic monetary standards, including Rome (Ag, Cu, Au), and China (silver, gold, copper/bronze, and iron, as well as several fiat regimes). These correspond, roughly, to retail, wholesale, and financial (banking, government) commerce. It's helpful to recognise that virtualy all names for money refer to either weight (penny, pound, shekel, drachma ...) or some impramateur of quality (royal, crown, mark, dollar, ...). Another set are based on divisions (denarius, dinar, dime, ...). In the English system, the silver pound was 240 pennyweights, wth subdivisions corresponding; Farthing: 1/4 penny, 1/960£ Happenny: 1/2 penny, 1/480£ Pence: 1/240£ Tuppence: 1/120£ Thruppence: 1/90£ Sixpence: 1/40£ Shilling (bob): 12d, 1/20£ Florin: 24d, 1/10£ Half crown: 30p, Florin 6d, 1/8£ 10 Bob: 120p, 4 Half crowns, 1/2£ The guinea is the odd one out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_currencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_currencies Adam smith discusses English currencyy, at length (of course), and of the maintenance or divergence of values of copper, silver, and gold. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_5 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...
- barking 8y agoNice write up. I remember the day the money was replaced, my business was in the sweet shop next to my primary school. I liked the new coins because they were all clean and shiny. I'm sure we were ripped off when it came to penny bars.