American Reacts to British Predecimal Currency

yes decimal currency is just base 10. ie 100 pence in a pound, 100 cent in a dollar etc

A farthing was a quarter of a penny, a bob was a shilling

britians always used miles. it's weird over here we use a mix of imperial and metric meausrements.

When you grew up with it it wasn't a problem but very natural. The information you are watching doesn't take that into account.

Tyler getting confused as usual. We always used the Pound, pre 1971 there was 240 pennies to the Pound, now there are 100!

We talk about miles to the gallon in fuel consumption and efficiency but buy fuel/ petrol (gasoline) in litres!

Originally it was a POUND of silver , the number 240 was chosen for the number of ways you can divide it up. All predecimal currency was weighted such that any amount of coins adding up to a pound WEIGHED a pound so if you had a lot you could just weigh it out rather than count every coin.

No idea where he got the km on road signs part. It's still all in miles

Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda still use the shilling according to Google. Also, the pound as been used since 1489 non stop.

They never mentioned the 10 bob note!

Decimalisation day was 15th February 1971.

It's just as ridiculous as trying to measure distances in miles, furlongs, yards, feet and inches, or measuring weight in tons, hundredweight, stones, pounds and ounces..
I grew up with this nonsense.
Some early members of the EU were allowed to opt out of using the Euro eg UK, Sweden, Denmark. Some countries who recently joined the EU are only allowed to use the Euro until they have demonstrated they have "economic convergence" with the Euro countries.

No more complicated than 12 inches to the foot, three feet to a yard and 1760 yards to a mile!! 😂

Tyler. The Imperial measurement system is NOT American. The clue is in the name "Imperial" relating to the British Empire. It is something you inherited from us and then the altered some of the liquid measures (something to do with British wine measures) ie: you have 16 fl oz. in a U.S. pint, we have 20 fl oz. in an Imperial pint, hence your Gallons are also smaller than ours - 128 fl oz. in the US versus 160 fl oz. in UK.

Scotland still prints its own banknotes.

I remember a song to the tune of Rule Britannia.

🎵Rule Britannia
Two tanners make a bob
Three make one and six
And four two bob🎵

They missed another note. prior to 1969 there was a 10 shilling note.

With all the different coins, it really isn't any different to modern coins. Like we only use pounds and pence, but we have 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1 and £2 coins in regular circulation. Just like in America, where there are multiple coins but they're only measuring or dollars and cents. With pre-decimal, just add shillings to that - all the farthings and groats and crowns are still just measuring pounds, shillings and pence. The names might sound confusing, but again it's really no different from an American calling a 10 cents coin a 'dime', or a 5 cents coin a 'nickel'. Just imagine that those names were stamped on the coins, rather than being nicknames.

The UK does NOT use KM for road signs. ALL road signs are in Miles. It is not legal to use KM on road signs. Metric units for distance and speed are not permitted on UK road signs (Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions Act 2016).

How about you check out about when Australia converted from the imperial to the metric money system. This happened on the 14th of February 1966.

People always dislike big changes - and I remember when we "went decimal" it was mainly the older people who struggled to get their heads around the new system.
We were told the Pound would stay the same - it was just the sub-divisions of it that would change. In my early twenties at the time, we embraced the decimal system, as we realised it was far more logical and easy to calculate!

The Romans came up with the system, very divisible , easy to use , durable , the coins were all valuable and useful for particular transactions.
In the middle 1960s a threepenny coin would buy the same as £1 today , and both coins are similar in shape and size.
A pound then is worth approximately £80 ish pounds today.

What happened to the ten bob note? Completely ignored. This guy never used proper money. It wasn't at all difficult. Not even if you had an American hold out a handful of coins and tell you to take whichever ones you needed. And no, they wouldn't be cheated - just had the money counted out as if they were a three-year old.

A shilling is 12 old pence. A pound had 240 pennies. A farthing was a quarter of a penny.
Prices went up alot with decimalisation.

Here's a funny little joke/ story. Two women talking. Both husbands called Bob. One woman says...' if your Bob doesn't give my Bob, the bob that your Bob owes my Bob, my Bob will give your Bob a bob on the nose.

Horse racing still uses guineas. Horses are bought in guineas & some horse races still use the term. eg The 1000 Guineas is a horse race at Newmarket.

I'm British & heard of the Predecimal Currency & don't understand it. But then again from some rather less than charming people that I had the pleasure of dealing with in a call centre the UK would still be stuck in this crazy way of handling cash & weights n measurements.

What about the 10 bob note? 12 was used as a base because you can divide it into 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, as opposed to base 10 into 1, 2, 5

UK has used the pound sterling since around the 1500s. Originally this was used to weigh the weight of silver coins.

Firstly and it even appeared in the second film clip the girl says 2 shillings eleven pence and 3 farthings, the smallest coin of the realm (kingdom) was the farthing (which had a wren [bird] on it -a wren being the smallest bird in UK.) a farthing was one quarter of a penny and there was also a half penny. So £ was 240 penny and was abbreviated to 240d and 480 half penny (called hapni) and 960 farthings, farthings went out of circulation in 1960. The reason why people resisted the currency change was because it was a gov't con to devalue the currency overnight - and probably led to an inflationary spiral in the country -(it didn't effect the balance of trade (so rich people in Gov't happy) working people paid for it, The joke was on Feb 15th 1971 every thing more than halved in value. A cup of tea costing 6d (remember the abreviation "d") suddenly became 6P (P =pence), problem was 6d = sixpence = half a Shilling whereas 6P equaled 1 shilling 2½ d so a 142% increase. and I'm not exaggerating this happened with many small products - the type of products bought by the elderly who where royally ripped off by this sh!t.

After February 15th 1971 there was a ½ p which was to try to stop some of this currency bilking but it tended to be ignored. it ceased to be currency in 1984, and was roughly the same size as the old Farthing.

Many phases exist around the old currency especially the Shilling = for example to take the Queen's King's shilling is a term which means you have enlisted in the Army or Navy, and even if you were a very bad soldier the Army court could deduct your pay but only down to one shilling.

Bad news as late as 1918 - if your family received your pay from the Army/Navy less one shilling that meant you had been killed in action but buried, if you weren't buried, for example you or your ship was completely destroyed or you were M.I.A, so no body to bury, then the Shilling was not deducted, the shilling was called "the blanket bill" - because many believed it was for the blanket they used to bury a body.

final point Shilling is an old European word generally denoting a Shield which many coins had on the none monarchs head side. generally the shield was the royal coat of arms, The idea it refers to a scalp ins largely untrue -it refers to the division of 20 parts of the £.

We learned it as children - how hard can it be?

Britain has been using the Pound Sterling for hundreds of years.

Imperial measures were originally British, but you changed some of them - you changed the pint from 20 fluid ounces to 16 fluid ounces.

Penny is 1, pence is plural.

He never mentioned the 10 bob (10 shilling) note

I remember pre-decimal. Pounds, shillings and pence. A lot of the coins had different names
my mum used to put silver sixpences into our Christmas pudding. I had to stir the mix 3 times because I had black hair. 🤷‍♂ No idea why.
We had a bridge called the Ha'Penny Bridge as the price was half a penny for a return journey

Hi buddy would love to see your reaction to the British crusade to end slavery keep up the good work buddy live your vids

Don’t forget Groats nobles and angels plus there is Guineas

Then there was the farthing a quarter of a penny. There was also occasional coins, the half farthing and third farthing

I was 12 when the UK went decimal. I knew that there were 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound (240 pennies in a pound). It was second nature to use.

The UK has always had the 'pound' £.
Pre 1971 it was how that pound £ was made up.

Nine coins of different denominations.

£1 Note = 240 Pennies.

Crown = 60 Pennies.

Halfcrown = 30 Pennies.

Florin = 24 Pennies.

Shilling = 12 Pennies.

Sixpence = 6 Pennies.

Threepence = 3 Pennies.

Penny = 1 Penny.

Halfpenny = ½ Penny.

Farthing = ¼ Penny.

We buy petrol in Litres but our cars do X miles per gallon 'MPG'.
Our road distances are in Miles.
Our speedometers in cars are in Miles but also show kilometres.
We use both inches, feet & yards alongside mm, cm & metres.

I bought a door the other day I said to the guy 27 inches wide and he said 686 mm 😕 I said as long as it's 27 inches wide it will fit 🙄

The Imperial System came from Britain.

ive got a lot these coins at my dads house, in a suitcase stored away a load of old coins and some notes what my granddad put away many many decades ago, remember finding then about 25 years ago plus prob close to 30 years now. they sure odd coins

I'm a 30 year old British guy this is extremely confusing, when they said the shilling is 12 pence, your face is like what I was thinking😂 the new system makes so much more sense!

Where did you think America got "Imperial" from... Maybe the British empire? 😂 We just pretended like we didn't make the worst counting system. We still use oz, lbs, stone, foot, yards, miles, gallons, pints. Most people still use psi for tyres rather than bar. Britain is slowly removing the imperial stuff, but getting there.

"It was the Romans" works a lot of the time, as well as "Blame the French".
So, the Romans used 12 as their base for counting most things (duodecimal) including uncia (which was an ounce), against the common misconception it was 100 and 10s. Their soldiers worked in teams of 12, because then you could have 2x6, 3x4, 4x3, 6x2 or 1x12. That pervaded the British systems for 2 millenia. The Imperial system, which we exported to our Empire, including of course the USA.
240 bits of shillings made one pound. Of course, a loaf of bread was a penny at one point (one pence lol).
Also Romans for miles (mille passus = 2 Roman mile = 5k paces).

I just don't understand why the USA doesn't use this currency system 😁