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The numbers refer to pre-decimalization British currency. To convert to modern currency: £19 19s 6d = £19.975 £20 0s 6d = £20.025

to3m 12y ago
Wikipedia has a few pages about the various systems of this kind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-decimal_currency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-decimal_currency. Difficult to fathom why the fashion for these passed, because such systems provide so many advantages. A good example is the Spanish system of division into 34, which permits straightforward further division into not only 2 but also 17 pieces - a case very difficult to handle with the modern restrictive, awkward and inconvenient decimal systems.
- lacksrigour 12y ago
  What is the benefit to something that Divides into 2 and 17 rather than 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, etc that existing systems of base 10 decimal use?
  - jameshart 12y ago
    Well, say you're out to dinner with 16 friends, and you need to divide up the bill... the practicality should be obvious.
- jameshart 12y ago
  It saddens me in some ways that the UK currency decimalized before mass computerization of record-keeping took off. I think I would have liked to have lived in a world where database currency columns needed to support pounds, shillings and pence (keeping in mind that pence could be divided into quarters, of course).
  - jaza 12y ago
    Dealing with Olde English currency units (and other non-decimal currency units) may have been "a fun challenge" for programmers... but it does NOT sadden me that programmers have seldom had to deal with them! It would have led to a whole world of hellish pain. Have we not suffered enough pain as it is, what with character encoding, timezone handling, y2k-incompatible dates, spatial coordinate / projection systems, etc?
    - to3m 12y ago
      I'm not even sure there'd be much to do: just store everything in sixteenths a of a farthing and format on output, much as people do with tenths of a penny today. If anything the numbers are actually slightly more convenient for machines with no divide instruction.
  - ams6110 12y ago
    It's only recently (2001?) that US stock prices moved to decimal from previous eighths of a dollar. The origin of this was spanish "pieces of eight" but not sure why it persisted so long. Maybe because it made the spread always at least $0.125 ?

to3m 12y ago

Wikipedia has a few pages about the various systems of this kind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-decimal_currency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-decimal_currency. Difficult to fathom why the fashion for these passed, because such systems provide so many advantages. A good example is the Spanish system of division into 34, which permits straightforward further division into not only 2 but also 17 pieces - a case very difficult to handle with the modern restrictive, awkward and inconvenient decimal systems.

lacksrigour 12y ago
What is the benefit to something that Divides into 2 and 17 rather than 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, etc that existing systems of base 10 decimal use?
- jameshart 12y ago
  Well, say you're out to dinner with 16 friends, and you need to divide up the bill... the practicality should be obvious.
jameshart 12y ago
It saddens me in some ways that the UK currency decimalized before mass computerization of record-keeping took off. I think I would have liked to have lived in a world where database currency columns needed to support pounds, shillings and pence (keeping in mind that pence could be divided into quarters, of course).
- jaza 12y ago
  Dealing with Olde English currency units (and other non-decimal currency units) may have been "a fun challenge" for programmers... but it does NOT sadden me that programmers have seldom had to deal with them! It would have led to a whole world of hellish pain. Have we not suffered enough pain as it is, what with character encoding, timezone handling, y2k-incompatible dates, spatial coordinate / projection systems, etc?
  - to3m 12y ago
    I'm not even sure there'd be much to do: just store everything in sixteenths a of a farthing and format on output, much as people do with tenths of a penny today. If anything the numbers are actually slightly more convenient for machines with no divide instruction.
- ams6110 12y ago
  It's only recently (2001?) that US stock prices moved to decimal from previous eighths of a dollar. The origin of this was spanish "pieces of eight" but not sure why it persisted so long. Maybe because it made the spread always at least $0.125 ?