Changing the Change

"I cannot doubt," said William Ewart Gladstone in 1845, "that a decimal system of coinage would be of universal advantage in monetary transactions." Nonetheless, Gladstone warned against "any decisive step" until "the subject has been thoroughly sifted and is well understood by the public." Last week Chancellor Selwyn Lloyd announced that the government is appointing a new committee (the sixth since 1824) to sift the practical problems of currency reform. If they do not prove overwhelming, promised Lloyd, the government will definitely adopt a decimalized currency--possibly by 1965.

Next to Yap. Though all change is abhorrent to the English, small change in Britain is impossibly hard on tourists, pocket linings and computers, whose manufacturers keep their most advanced models out of the country rather than adapt them to the currency.* The British have seven separate coins, ranging from the halfpenny (pronounced haypenny) through the half crown, which is worth 35-c-; and next to the stone cartwheels used for coins on the Pacific island of Yap, they are almost certainly the world's heaviest. Since the lowest-value folding money is the 10-shilling note, which has a U.S. value of $1.40, Britons stagger under the weight of small change they must carry; the four pennies needed to make a phone call alone weigh 1 2/3 oz.

Like English place names, English coins have an illogic all their own: while there are half crowns, which to foreigners are almost indistinguishable from florins or 2-shilling pieces, crowns are collectors' items. Though many expensive items are still priced by the guinea (1 pound plus 1 shilling), there is no guinea coin or bill.

From the U.S., which adopted decimal coinage in 1792, to South Africa, which made the change in 1961, 145 countries have decimalized their currency; Britain is the last major bastion of currency confusion. In school alone, according to an Australian survey, decimalization would save teachers up to 50% of the time they now take to teach children mathematics. In addition, English children often have to memorize the medieval apothecaries' scale (20 grains to a scruple), linear measure (40 rods to the furlong), dry measure (4 pecks to the bushel) and liquid measure (52.5 imperial gallons to a hogshead).

The strongest argument for adoption of a decimalized currency is Britain's impending entry into Europe's solidly decimalized Common Market. Said a French businessman last week: "If I had to figure out the cost of hauling 1,006 short tons of coal 704 ton-miles at 9 pounds, 8 and 6 a ton f.o.b. Cardiff--why, I'd order it from Germany instead."

Fivepenny Sixpences. Of various proposals for decimalization, the most practical is the solution already adopted by South Africa and recommended for Australia and New Zealand. The pound note would be scrapped, and the 10-shilling note become the standard denomination, while shillings would represent ten penny units like the dime; the present sixpenny bit would thus represent 5 pence and be equivalent to the U.S. nickel, while the half crown would correspond to a quarter. Britons are divided over nomenclature for the new 10-shilling bill. Some want to call it a "Britannia," others a "noble"--after an English coin that was worth 6 shillings and 8 pence in 1461 and, mercifully, was scrapped. No one has yet suggested calling it a dollar.

*The currency really got unmanageable around 770, when Offa, King of Mercia, decided to issue pennies weighing the equivalent of "32 wheat corns in the midst of the ear." Since the pound sterling was based on a pound of silver, this later came out to 240 pence to the pound.

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