Re: (TFT) Re live metric or die

[Joe Hartley <jh@brainiac.com>]

"John Paul Bakshoian" <hailmelee@hotmail.com> wrote:
> True.  It works that way with money also.  100 pennies equals a dollar.  
> Therefore $1.57 equals one hundred and fiftyseven cents.  Now if we can only 
> get some of these other nations to do the same.
> 
> 15 million lira?  2 pounds 4 pennies?

I believe that all the world currencies are on base 10 systems.  There
are theoretically fractions of the Lira, but the Lira is so worthless
anyway you need huge numbers of them to buy anything.  What they really
need is a revaluation of the currency (100,000 old Lira = 1 new Lira),
but given the pain France went through in 1960, they were probably
scared off.  Germany went through the same thing after the war, when you
needed a barrowfull of notes to buy a loaf of bread, but that was just
part of the whole collapse of the German economic system.

British currency is a different story; as you might expect from the
society that put 16 ounces in a (weight) pound, the British had a very
quirky monetary system based on the penny.  There were 12 pennies (the
Brits use "pence" as the plural) in a shilling and 20 shillings in a 
pound.  Confusing?  You bet.  That changed in 1971 when England decimalized
their currency.  One pound is now divided into 100 new pence.

> However, in a world of semi-literates, how come the U.S. still doesn't place 
> the numeric value on the coin?  We write out the number:  Quarter dollar, 
> One dime, One cent.

An excellent question!  I have no idea.


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       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
     12 Emma G Lane, Narragansett, RI  02882 - vox 401.782.9042
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

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