In article writes:
In a recent message "Jud" wrote:
....
Why did it take so long for the £/S/d system to disappear, and become
a more functional decimal system?

There was nothing disfunctional about it, other than that the penny was
too large for its value. Interestingly, computers now would have no
trouble whatsoever coping with the £sd system (and one could argue
that if we had retained it the population as a whole might be
better at mental arithmetic... :-)

Computers of the fifties had no problem with it either. Look at old
computers and find the LEO (Lyon's Electronic Office), and see that it
was from the tea company. Internally it used a mixed base representation.

But better mental arithmetic? I still remember the first time I was in
the UK that I had to help a grocer to add the figures. (That was 1968.)
The mechanical cash-registers did much better at adding.
--
dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland, +31205924131
home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; http://www.cwi.nl/~dik/