Decimalisation 50 years ago today!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

This makes me feel absolutely ancient. I was 9. I remember lots of work in Maths lessons at school to get us used to decimal coinage and we all got used to the new money very quickly. As I recall, many older people struggled, possibly because of poor numeracy, but resistance to change was a big part of it. There were also complaints that when retailers converted prices to the new money many took the opportunity to round up rather than down, or just increase the prices, so many people felt they were being ripped off.

I don't recall doing many money sums in Maths before this point, probably because teachers knew we wouldn't need that skill for very long. They must have been so hard.

A shopper's purchases come to 6/11. How much change should she expect if she pays with a 10/- note?

A clock costs £1-5-0. What would be the cost of buying 17 such clocks?

For the record, this is how it worked.

£1 was made up of 20 shillings. Each shilling was made up of 12 pennies. We also had halfpennies. By the time I was born, the farthing (a quarter of a penny) was no longer in use. The coins we had were:

Halfpenny (usually known as a ha'penny, pronounced haypenny)*
Penny, a large brown coin
Threepenny (usually pronounced thruppeny) bit (brassy colour, thick, 12-sided)
Sixpence, silver, small
Shilling, silver, bit bigger than a sixpence
Two shilling bit (florin), also silver, bigger and thicker than a shilling
Half a crown (two shillings sixpence)*
Ten shilling note
Pound note

*- although now I've checked I see these ceased to be legal tender a few years before decimalisation

On decimalisation:
Old penny and thruppeny bit ceased to be legal tender
New coins introduced: 1/2p, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p
Sixpence = 2 1/2 new pence, withdrawn in 1980
One shilling = 5 new pence, so the old shilling coins continued in use
Ten shillings = 50 new pence (eventually the note was replaced by the 50p coin)
£1 = 100 new pence

20p coin introduced 1982. The new halfpennies are no longer legal tender.

Anybody else remember the old coins? I think we still have a set knocking about somewhere.

I wasn't born until 77, but I remember some of the old coins being used in circulation (was a pre-decimilisation coin also used for 10p?)

I remember my grandparents showing me coins with George VI on them.

I love the shape of the old threepenny bit.

I wasent born untill 1973 ,but I also remember some of the old coins in circulation 1 shilling for 5 pence ,2 for ten pence .

I wonder where the name shilling and crown came from. If there was half a crown was there also a crown?
Interesting article here from Wiki. I never realised that the good old British tradition of £sd was actually a French invention!
There is another article here about the Crown. The pound, 20 shillings, could be divided in to 2 (ten bob), into 4 (crown or 5 bob) or into 8 (half crown or two-and-half shillings). The florin, or 2 shillings, was an anomoly; it was a tenth of a pound - an early, Victorian attempt at decimalisation.

The old system wasn't really that complicated. A system based on 240 pence to the pound gave itself to being divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 ,10 and a dozen. Very useful, pre-calculator!

I wonder where the name shilling and crown came from. If there was half a crown was there also a crown?

Some might find this interesting ...

How did people ,s wages change ,my Dad said he was earning about £30 in the early 70,s which apparently a reasonable wage ,was the new pound equal to the old pound?

@ErrolTheDragon

People seemed to be so much better at mental maths back then.

Much more to do with necessity because of no calculators than anything to do with the weird mix of bases in old units. Mental maths is about practice.

Mental maths has declined due to calculators, not the decimal system. It's just practice that people don't get any more.

DP is brilliant with imperial length measurements because he worked in a wood yard as a teenager, which is something that probably wouldn't be allowed now - a 16/17 YO operating the big saws , but he can tell you exactly how many pieces of 18 x24 inch wood you can cut from a 8 foot x 4 foot sheet for example. But he asks me what 10% off a £30 bill is or something similiarly basic.

In the early 1990s I worked in a bakery that still had a very old fashioned till so we needed to add things up by hand and work out change.

No-one needs to do that now and far more people pay by card anyway, so till operating is almost always automated - the till and card machines are sometimes linked but the most the till operator needs to do is press a button to confirm that the card transaction has gone through.

If you really want to mess with the mind of a young till operator these days, which half of Mumsnet would probably consider to be emotional abuse, give them £21.50 for a £6.50 bill and watch the looks of confusion and suspicion before the look of amazement when their till tells them to give you exactly £15 in change.

was the new pound equal to the old pound?

There wasn't a new pound. It was exactly the same. The notes used were the same ones as pre-decimalisation.

give them £21.50 for a £6.50 bill and watch the looks of confusion and suspicion before the look of amazement when their till tells them to give you exactly £15 in change.
I do that, too. Takes them by surprise every time but it used to be considered a commonplace practice. The trouble is when you are using a self-service till - you have to remember to give it the £1.50 before you give it the £20 note. However, the number of times I have carefully calculated for it to give me 20p change or 50p ... and it churns back lots of 5p shrapnel at me. Grr!

If you really want to mess with the mind of a young till operator these days, which half of Mumsnet would probably consider to be emotional abuse, give them £21.50 for a £6.50 bill and watch the looks of confusion and suspicion before the look of amazement when their till tells them to give you exactly £15 in change.

A few years ago I was in a supermarket queue, at the till, and the checkout operator asked if I wanted to add a little bit to the £49.17 bill for charity. I said yes, put 83p on please.

"Oh !", said the operator "that's lucky, it comes to exactly £50 !"

I commented it wasn't luck, just did it in my head. At which point the lady in the queue behind me poked me (quite hard) and said lying wasn't a nice thing to do to such a nice young person. She must have seen my confusion because she added "no one could do that in their heads"

I felt it better to apologise ... (which reminded me of school).

We had a stash of the huge old pennies, as there was a toyshop that had a model railway in the window that ran for a minute on one old penny.

When DF moved to the UK he told my DMs parents that the money would have to change. So when it did he was quite smug ....

I was in my 20s - I still use stones and pounds for weight, inches and feet, and convert centigrade into farenheit in my head.

I remember old money (just). Going with my grandmother to the local shop in her village on this day 50 years ago and five items of shopping costing under 50p. The other thing I remember is how prices were rounded up such as school dinner money and how it seemed to lead to the inflation we had in the 1970s.

@Crankley

I was in my 20s - I still use stones and pounds for weight, inches and feet, and convert centigrade into farenheit in my head.

If you want to confuse an American, give them your weight in stone ...

This was a couple of years before I was born, but my husband is old enough to remember it and I enjoy his old money anecdotes.

He told me there was relief in his house as his mum was a local agent for a catalogue, and adding up the money was a nightmare in imperial currency.

I have somewhere in my attic a red plastic 'decimal adder' which my grandma gave me to play with when I was small, it obviously having outlived its usefulness by that time.

@DGRossetti, that supermarket incident would have annoyed me intensely! I was very lucky in the 60s to go to a primary school which taught the 3 Rs in the traditional way and we did lots of mental arithmetic. The sum you mention would have been an easy warm up question back then.

Born after decimalisation, but I remember the old shillings as 5p and the florin for 10p.
My df often used to look at something (still does) and say "They really want five bob for that!", so we were used to conversions.
My ds is into old (WWII specifically) stories so can do a very quick job of adding up and converting money. He finds it quite fascinating.

But I'd still use oz for weighing, feet and inches for measuring etc. I just find them easier as a concept.