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I wouldn't call it a mess at all, 240 is a highly divisible number which eased commerce based on mental arithmetic a great deal. You said it yourself, 60 pence

I wouldn't call it a mess at all, 240 is a highly divisible number which eased commerce based on mental arithmetic a great deal. You said it yourself, 60 pence to a crown, what's a tenth of a crown? half shilling, easy. Price is 3 and a half crown, paid with a pound. you don't have a half-crown coin, there are a bunch of ways to come up with 30p or 2s6p, the sums are all instant when one is in the habit of it. Let's ignore the guinea! Decimalization was probably the right call in an age of calculators and computers, same with the metric system, but the old LSD system and imperial units existed for a reason, which is easy divisibility into convenient fractions. Decimal systems get annoying for mental math unless you happen to need tenths or fifths, or the only kind of quartering you need to do is out of 100.

masklinn 3y ago
> 240 is a highly divisible number Which nobody considered for a single seconds. Nobody was counting the number of pences in a pound at the time, these were not sensible scalings of values. Instead you had what was essentially 2 different scales: the pence scale (which topped out to the shillings) and the pounds scale (which bottomed out at the shilling) > You said it yourself, 60 pence to a crown I also said that it had no actual relevance. > Decimalization was probably the right call in an age of calculators and computers, same with the metric system, but the old LSD system and imperial units existed for a reason, which is easy divisibility into convenient fractions. They mostly existed because they were direct offshoots of the carolingian currency system. After all Roman currency had been decimal (or a mix of decimal and binary) before it devolved, and Russia began the movement of re-decimalising currencies.
- samatman 3y ago
  > Which nobody considered for a single second Of course they did.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    No, they did not, again nobody would use pennies and pounds together as a single scale, such scaling is metricated thinking.
    - samatman 3y ago
      You can count the value of the old coinage by weighing it, you really think that such a system was an accident? I mean, I'm familiar with the history so I know 12 of 20 was a deliberate choice, but if you don't want to read into it, ask yourself if that's plausible.

masklinn 3y ago

> 240 is a highly divisible number Which nobody considered for a single seconds. Nobody was counting the number of pences in a pound at the time, these were not sensible scalings of values. Instead you had what was essentially 2 different scales: the pence scale (which topped out to the shillings) and the pounds scale (which bottomed out at the shilling) > You said it yourself, 60 pence to a crown I also said that it had no actual relevance. > Decimalization was probably the right call in an age of calculators and computers, same with the metric system, but the old LSD system and imperial units existed for a reason, which is easy divisibility into convenient fractions. They mostly existed because they were direct offshoots of the carolingian currency system. After all Roman currency had been decimal (or a mix of decimal and binary) before it devolved, and Russia began the movement of re-decimalising currencies.

samatman 3y ago
> Which nobody considered for a single second Of course they did.
- masklinn 3y ago
  No, they did not, again nobody would use pennies and pounds together as a single scale, such scaling is metricated thinking.
  - samatman 3y ago
    You can count the value of the old coinage by weighing it, you really think that such a system was an accident? I mean, I'm familiar with the history so I know 12 of 20 was a deliberate choice, but if you don't want to read into it, ask yourself if that's plausible.