this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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You gained pounds (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by Varven@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I watched a video (Invidious) yesterday detailing the type of coins they used before 1971 in the UK and its empire, and it was actually insane.

1 Pound = 20 Shillings = 240 Pennies, with coins for 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 6 pennies, 1, 2, 2.5, 5 Shillings and banknotes for the Pounds, and each of these coins had 5 or more different names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/£sd

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It kinda made sense for a while. Remember we're looking at this from a modern lense.

240 is very divisible. It's similar to why we chose 360° for a circle, or 24 hours in a day.

It stopped making sense as more and more countries shifted to decimalisation, and machines made extremely quick+accurate division trivial and accessible.