The decimal system, as applied to the coinage & weights & measures of Great Britain : dedicated to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury / by Henry Taylor.

  • Taylor, Henry.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The decimal system, as applied to the coinage & weights & measures of Great Britain : dedicated to the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury / by Henry Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    14/76 (page 14)
    nomination, like the tenth of a Florin, is too great a one for the requirements of the case. It is either too small | or too large to take the place of any existing coin. In t the first place, as to the coin itself, (call it what you will,) an objection arises as to its composition material, j Copper is not eligible from its weight. In silver, as i proposed by Dr. Bowring, it would be too small to be i either popular or extensively useful; whilst any kind of i mixed metal finds no favour at the Mint. Again, who i would like a coin of account, bearing almost an entirely j new relation to the old money, often requiring calcu- | lation, and whereby the chain of old association was \ nearly broken ? Our escape from dilBficulty would seem to be by excluding such a denomination from our i scheme altogether, and to pass by one step from the . Florin to its hundredth. If three denominations of ac- 1 count will answer every useful end, four would be only an encumbrance. What Frenchman says 3 francs 6 decimes and 5 centimes, for 3 francs and 65 centimes? What Englishman would say 3 florins 4 victorias (groats) and 6 cents (farthings), when 3 florins and 46 cents is shorter? Our purely scientific reformers will exclaim, this is not the decimal system, but a mixture of decimal and centesimal. So much the better, if it answers the end in view, with more of simplicity and brevity- What man walks two sides of a triangle, when one will take him straight to a given object? Fortu- nately we are not speculating in the dark, but are in a position to profit by the experience of other nations.