How did financial systems cope with Pounds/Shillings/Pence?
Paul Grayson
For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s we used a
different currency system. Instead of having 100 pennies to the pound, we
had an intermediate currency the shilling. There were 12 pennies to the
shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the pound.
The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957 there was also
a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. I'm too
young to remember much about this myself, but some of the coins (notably the
sixpence) were legal tender once decimalisation occurred.
How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards deal with
this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
I was prompted by a recent article in computing magazine, where someone
wondered how to get Lotus 1-2-3 to deal with his historical accounting
methods.
--
Paul Grayson, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
Looking for Unix/Linux work in my area - email for details.
Geoff Lane
pa...@shippo.virgin.net (Paul Grayson) writes:
>
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards deal with
> this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
Some early computers had mixed base arithmetic hardware. IO via flexowriter
tape had all the necessary characters; via cards used local
charset/conventions. When COBOL was finally adopted there may well have
been local enhancements to the compiler. This is before even my time :-)
> I was prompted by a recent article in computing magazine, where someone
> wondered how to get Lotus 1-2-3 to deal with his historical accounting
> methods.
Do all your financial computations in farthings and convert from/to LSD on
input/output.
--
Geoff. Lane. | Today's target: 47.639963 N; 122.130295 W. Fire at Will!!
The clothes have no emperor.
-- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
Paul Grayson (pa...@shippo.virgin.net) writes:
> For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s we used a
> different currency system.
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define.
I would have used PL/I which had sterling support.
Nick Spalding
>
> For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s we used a
> different currency system. Instead of having 100 pennies to the pound, we
> had an intermediate currency the shilling. There were 12 pennies to the
> shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the pound.
> The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957 there was also
> a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. I'm too
> young to remember much about this myself, but some of the coins (notably the
> sixpence) were legal tender once decimalisation occurred.
>
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards deal with
> this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
The 1401 had an expensive add-on for Sterling Arithmetic. The
punched cards used a single column for each of the shillings and
pence. In the shillings column one of the zone punches, I forget
which, gave an increment of 10 on the value. In the pence column
the two zone punches were used for 10d and 11d. In the machine
these translated directly into the A & B zones of the BCD coding. A
Sterling instruction dealt with a single field containing a variable
number of pounds digits followed by the shillings and pence. I
think this was available on the other 1400 series machines.
The other common method was to have subroutines to convert LSD to
pence on input and back to LSD on output, all arithmetic being done
on whole pence. I never saw halfpennies considered at all. One of
the first jobs I did in 1968 after leaving IBM where I was a CE and
taking up programming full time was an Invoicing and Debtors Ledger
system on a 1401H which was a half-speed 1401 with all special
features stripped out and a max memory of 4000 characters. Rented
cheap in the late '60s to use up some of the thousands of rented
1401s that had been handed back by people who traded up to 360/30s.
I wrote some nice little subroutines to do the sterling conversion
which were included in every single program. Three years later the
decimal currency came in and I went back and spent a criminally long
and well paid time replacing those subroutines. The guts of the
programs still worked on pence only these were 100 to the pound
instead of 240.
How it was handled in COBOL I don't know.
--
Nick Spalding
Scott Wheeler
Grayson) wrote:
>How did financial systems deal with this currency system?
Apparently Lyons (said to have produced the first commercial computer,
the LEO) contributed of the order of a million pounds to the
decimalisation campaign, for this reason. Operationally, I gather they
worked in decimal units, rounding to the nearest penny at the last
stage. Since their use of their own systems was to run distribution
and payroll for their chain of tea-shops, they were able to arrange
things so that a deficit one week was balanced out the next. Of course
this was long before COBOL, so I don't know if similar practices
continued when computers became more capable.
Scott
--
(please de-mung address if replying by email)
John W Hall
delightful (mostly) behemoths built on a cast-iron frame that itself
weighed almost a ton. The 402 and 421 counters has gears with
saw-tooth teeth, the driving gear, which rotated continuously, was
engaged with the driven gear (which kept the count) at the correct
time on the cycle, depending on which hole was punched in the
associated column.
For normal/decimal counters, the driven & driving gears were the same
size with the same number of teeth, but for 12-based counters the
driving gear was larger with more teeth so it could turn the
driven/counter gear earlier than normal (the 'counts' were
closer-spaced to fit 12 where 10 were normally), i.e there was a 12/10
ratio in the gearing. There was also a base-2 counter for 2x10
shillings, but this had only minor differences from normal counters.
I heard there were other kluges for India, with 16 Annas to the Rupee
(or was that the other way round?).
This stuff really gave our brains a good workout.
John W Hall
wrote:
>The 1401 had an expensive add-on for Sterling Arithmetic.
I was an IBM UK CE when the 1401 first appeared, and did my training
in the Sindelfingen plant near Stuttgart. After the training course I
had some time available before our first install, so spent a month in
the plant getting some experience. The Sterling feature was a bugger
hardware-wise. because the normal signals were diverted through some
extra logic, and signal delays were a severe problem, necessitating
some hand-picked logic cards with the fastest transistors (there was a
lot of variability between nominally identical transistors back then).
Julian Thomas
>How did financial systems deal with this currency system?
With difficulty, as has been mentioned. I've seen the sterling logic in
the 1410 logic diagrams (but never saw a machine with it implemented).
>A standard COBOL PIC statement must have been hard to define.
I suspect that there were some addons to make it work, or as otherwise
mentioned, everything was done in pence.
I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
it! But I remember on one of my early business trips to the UK there were
3 of us; after dinner we would retire to the lounge with coffee, and
agonize over the check. One evening the waiter said "Well, it's easy for
you tonight, you all had the same thing". We were somewhat overcome with
laughter; our agonizing was just over trying to calculate the appropriate
tip, and since we were all on expenses, we were just splitting the check 3
ways no matter who had what!
I think I may still have a farthing somewhere.
--
Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove letter a for email (or switch . and @)
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
All computers wait at the same speed.
Brian Boutel
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 3/12/99, 13:40:22, pa...@shippo.virgin.net (Paul Grayson) wrote
regarding How did financial systems cope with Pounds/Shillings/Pence?:
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard
COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards
deal with
> this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
One early 60's machine, the Leo III (not the Pope of that name) could
do Sterling arithmetic directly in hardware (or decimal, or binary,
even yards feet and inches!) It did arithmetic in 4-bit chunks and
used "excess constants" which were the difference between the radix in
use in each digit position and 16. For example, to add in decimal
19526 + 12345,
Start with 19526
add the excess constants for decimal 66666
------
gives 7FB8C
add 12345
------
gives 91ED1
subtract constants *where carry
did not occur* 60660
------
final result is 31871
The excess constants were kept in a register which could be loaded by
the programmer. For binary they were all 0, so in effect the
arithmetic was hexadecimal. For Sterling, using decimal pounds, 2
digits for shillings and 1 for pence, the constants were 66E64 (the
leftmost one was used for all more significant digits).
Subtraction was slightly more complicated. Don't ask about
multiplication.
Serling and yards,feet,inches examples left to the reader.
--brian
Charlie Gibbs
ab...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) writes:
>Paul Grayson (pa...@shippo.virgin.net) writes:
>
>> For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s
>> we used a different currency system.
>...
>> How did financial systems deal with this currency system?
>> A standard COBOL PIC statement must have been hard to define.
>
> I would have used PL/I which had sterling support.
So did RPG. I never had the pleasure of using RPG's Sterling
routines, but I bet somewhere in my collection of old manuals
I could find one that describes the gory details.
Ahh, a.f.c... one of the few remaining places where the first
thing most people think when they hear "RPG" isn't "Role-Playing
Game"...
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
William Hamblen
wrote:
>Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
d. = denarius.
--
Night is the shadow of the Earth.
Harold Rabbie
>
>How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
with
>this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
Those of us in the last non-metric country on earth (the USA) still have to
deal with pounds and ounces, feet and inches, gallons, quarts, pints and so
on. It seems that every digital weighing scale here uses hundredths of a
pound, rather than ounces as God intended. Probably because the little
microprocessors in those things find decimal arithmetic to be easier than
hexadecimal :-)
Back in the UK, we spent several years of elementary school on problems like
"what's 7 stone, 11 pounds, 4 and 3/4 ounces of whatever at 5 pounds, 18
shillings and threepence-halfpenny per pound?" I wish I could have those
wasted brain cells back again.
Harold
John Hughes
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define.
As far as I remember (no practical experience, I'm a newbie, started
programming in '77) ICL Cobol had PIC's for LSD. PLAN (ICL 1900
assembler) certainly had some kind of support too, but I can't find my
reference card at the moment.
But I don't really understand your problem. Yes, LSD was a stupid
system, because it made things harder for people, but computers are
good at dealing with stupid systems with lots of dumb arithmetic,
CF NASA's use of lb/in/s: only one probe lost so far.
--
John Hughes <jo...@Calva.COM>,
Atlantic Technologies Inc. Tel: +33-1-4313-3131
66 rue du Moulin de la Pointe, Fax: +33-1-4313-3139
75013 PARIS.
John Friese
Julian Thomas <ja...@aepiax.net> wrote:
>
>I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
>feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
John L. Friese
fri...@math.arizona.edu
Derek Peschel
John Friese <fri...@math.arizona.edu> wrote:
>In article <38483cf1$2$wg$mr2...@news.epix.net>,
>Julian Thomas <ja...@aepiax.net> wrote:
>>I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
>>feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
>
>Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
It's 'd' for pence because 'd' stands for denarius or denarii. Logical, no?
The denarius was a a Roman coin. I have read "tenner" as a translation
of the name "denarius" (that may make more sense to British people than
Americans, since they call modern five-pound notes "fivers"). But I
couldn't tell you what the denarius is ten _of_. I have never seen Roman
coinage explained very logically. I suspect it just isn't completely
consistent. Same goes for Greek coinage.
And before you ask, the 's' is for solidus or solidi, not shillings!
(Another Roman coin.) Also written /, e.g., 3/6 = 3s 6d. That's why the
slash is called a solidus in many character set standards. And the
backslash is a reverse solidus, something I'm sure the Romans never dreamed
of.
I think the 'L' is for libra ("pounds" in Latin).
-- Derek
Brian Inglis
>In article <38483cf1$2$wg$mr2...@news.epix.net>,
>Julian Thomas <ja...@aepiax.net> wrote:
>>
>>I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
>>feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
>
>Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
>
>John L. Friese
>fri...@math.arizona.edu
IIRC L,S,D stood for the Latin librii, solidii, denarii -- I
believe the denarius was the smallest coin used by the Romans.
Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
--
Brian_...@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca)
use address above to reply
Brian Inglis
Grayson) wrote:
>
>For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s we used a
>different currency system. Instead of having 100 pennies to the pound, we
>had an intermediate currency the shilling. There were 12 pennies to the
>shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the pound.
>The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957 there was also
>a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. I'm too
>young to remember much about this myself, but some of the coins (notably the
>sixpence) were legal tender once decimalisation occurred.
>
>How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
>PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards deal with
>this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
>
>I was prompted by a recent article in computing magazine, where someone
>wondered how to get Lotus 1-2-3 to deal with his historical accounting
>methods.
The money was the least of the problems: you could fit pence in a
pound into eight bits or farthings in a pound into 12 bits. But
you always had to deal with miles, furlongs, chains, yards, feet,
inches; tons (always long Imperial), hundredweights (cwt),
stones, pounds and ounces, with avoirdupois and Troy variants;
barrels, gallons, pints and fluid ounces; and other mutiple radix
miscellany.
There must still be systems in the US that have to deal with all
that old stuff: I don't think anyone else uses it in business.
Richard Shetron
converted back to pounds, shillings, pence only when needed for output.
any number with 2 periods was assumed to be currency so 5.4.10 would be
5 pounds, 4 shillings and 10 pence. Found that out in a thermo program
from the unexpected error messages and strange results.
In article <slrn84e7s...@shippo.virgin.net>,
Paul Grayson <paul.g...@virgin.net> wrote:
>
>For those of you not based in the UK, until the early 1970s we used a
>different currency system. Instead of having 100 pennies to the pound, we
>had an intermediate currency the shilling. There were 12 pennies to the
>shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the pound.
>The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957 there was also
>a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. I'm too
>young to remember much about this myself, but some of the coins (notably the
>sixpence) were legal tender once decimalisation occurred.
>
>How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
>PIC statement must have been hard to define. How did punched cards deal with
>this? Were there any other non-decimal currency systems in place then?
>
>I was prompted by a recent article in computing magazine, where someone
>wondered how to get Lotus 1-2-3 to deal with his historical accounting
>methods.
>
Paul Grayson
>Before real computers we had Accounting/Tabulating machines,
>delightful (mostly) behemoths built on a cast-iron frame that itself
>weighed almost a ton. The 402 and 421 counters has gears with
>saw-tooth teeth, the driving gear, which rotated continuously, was
>engaged with the driven gear (which kept the count) at the correct
>time on the cycle, depending on which hole was punched in the
>associated column.
Coincidentally some of these were shown on a collectors programme on Channel
4 this afternoon, including one beast with farthing buttons, as part of
someone's private collection of mechanical calculating machines. Most of these
devices were declared obsolete during decimalisation. The camera didn't stay
on each device for long, but I recal one device was made by Facit
The oddest devices were small cylindrical mechanical calculator devices,
which from a distance resembled SLR camera lenses. These devices were
reputedly designed by a prisoner of the Nazis whilst in captivity. (Godwin's
law therefore does not apply to this thread.) Can anyone shed any more light
on these devices, as they were considerably smaller to the rest of the
devices on display?
Julian Thomas
>The oddest devices were small cylindrical mechanical calculator devices,
>which from a distance resembled SLR camera lenses. These devices were
>reputedly designed by a prisoner of the Nazis whilst in captivity.
>(Godwin's law therefore does not apply to this thread.) Can anyone shed
>any more light on these devices, as they were considerably smaller to the
>rest of the devices on display?
Sounds like the Kurta (Curta??) calculator that was in fairly wide use in
sports car rallies and the like; now at least endangered if not extinct.
--
Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove letter a for email (or switch . and @)
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
Why does the hardware keep getting faster, and the software slower?
Julian Thomas
>any number with 2 periods was assumed to be currency so 5.4.10 would be 5
>pounds, 4 shillings and 10 pence. Found that out in a thermo program
>from the unexpected error messages and strange results.
Good thing that went away before IP addresses appeared on the scene!
--
Julian Thomas: jt . epix @ net http://home.epix.net/~jt
remove letter a for email (or switch . and @)
Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org
In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State!
-- --
Silence is evidence of a superb command of the language
Tony Duell
: Coincidentally some of these were shown on a collectors programme on Channel
: 4 this afternoon, including one beast with farthing buttons, as part of
: someone's private collection of mechanical calculating machines. Most of these
: devices were declared obsolete during decimalisation. The camera didn't stay
: on each device for long, but I recal one device was made by Facit
I've managed to obtain a couple of such machines that were being thrown
out (although I am in no sense a collector). One is an Olivetti, the
other is some other make that I forget.
Unfortunately, neither works. The 'non-Olivetti' is missing the paper
roll holder and platten (it's a printing machine), the Olivetti was
modified at the time of decimalisation. There used to be a control on the
keyboard to select pure decimal or LSD mode -- the modification consided
of bending a couple of linkages to force it into decimal mode.
One day I'll have the courage to take them to bits and repair them...
: The oddest devices were small cylindrical mechanical calculator devices,
: which from a distance resembled SLR camera lenses. These devices were
Sounds like a Kurta 'Peppermill; (so called because they have a little
hand crank on top that resembles a pepper-grinding thing). Totally
beautiful, they work on the same principles as most mechanical adding
machines (stepped gear, etc). Instead of shifting a carriage to
multiply/divide by 10, you rotate the top part of the unit (which contains
the 'accumulator' register, etc). The only difference between one and
(say) a facit desktop calculator is the layout and physical size
As I said, totally beautiful. They're not common, but not that rare
either, but unfortunately they tend to attract very high prices due to
the engineering involved. I know I'll never own one.
-tony
Karlo Takki
(John Friese) wrote:
> In article <38483cf1$2$wg$mr2...@news.epix.net>,
> Julian Thomas <ja...@aepiax.net> wrote:
> >
> >I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
> >feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
>
> Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
d == denier.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are
really good at heart." - Anne Frank
David Given
John Friese <fri...@math.arizona.edu> wrote:
>In article <38483cf1$2$wg$mr2...@news.epix.net>,
>Julian Thomas <ja...@aepiax.net> wrote:
>>
>>I as an occasional visitor to the UK had finally gotten to where I had the
>>feel of Lsd (no, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
>
>Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
Denarii, IIRC.
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | "Premature optimisation is the root of all
| Play: dgi...@iname.com | evil." --- Don Knuth, quoting Tony Hoare
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
chris 'fufas' grace
> Coincidentally some of these were shown on a collectors programme on Channel
> 4 this afternoon, including one beast with farthing buttons, as part of
> someone's private collection of mechanical calculating machines. Most of these
> devices were declared obsolete during decimalisation. The camera didn't stay
> on each device for long, but I recal one device was made by Facit
>
The major manufacturers of business calculation
machines were Burroughs (now Unisys), Sumlock
Comptometer (Don;t know who they are now) and
Olivetti.
In those days, every business office had a
calculating section, which might only be one
person (usually a woman), with a comptometer.
A comptometer was a calculating machine with 15 or
so vertical columns of keys running from 0 to 9.
If the machine was a LSD machine, the rightmost
column had three keys, 1/4,1/2 and 3/4, the next
column left had 11 keys for 1d to 11d, the next
column left had the normal 10 keys 0-9/- and the
next column one key only for 10 shillings. The
remainder of the colums had 10 keys each for 0-9.
The rightmost 5 colums are shown below (you'll
need a fixed-pitch font), and there were more
colums to the left the same as the leftmost
column.
11
0 0 10
9 9 9
8 8 8
7 7 7
9 6 6
5 5 5
4 4 4
3 3 3 3/4
2 2 2 1/2
1 1 1 1 1/4
From which you can see that any amount from 1/4d
to 19 shillings 11 1/4pence could be represented
on the rightmost four columns.
Each column had a carry function to the next one
depending on the value, so sterling currency
additions simply needed the operator continually
punch the amounts in. When decimal currency came
in, the manufacturers simply put out modification
kits with new gearwheels and replaced the sterling
key columns with normal 0-9 banks. I think I still
have the wheels that were removed from my Mother's
machine.
Multiplication and division was a little
different, and was not done on the sterling keys.
All operators were given a set of conversion cards
when they were trained. These had decimal
equivalents (to 5 decimal places) for all sterling
amounts under one pound and the operators got to
know them by heart. These also included things
like miles, feet, inches, bushels, pecks and all
the other old Imperial measurements.
To multiply, for example, 456 * 123, the operator
would:
press the rightmost 1-2-3 keys 6 times (123*6),
move their hands one column left,
press the same 123 keys 5 times,
(123*50),then move left again and
press the 123 keys 4 times,
(123*400)
in effect doing what one would do in a normal long
multiplication.
I can't remember division but I seem to remember
that each key had its reverse number on it in a
smaller size (i.e 9 was 1, 8 was 2, etc) and the
operator used those markings when dividing or
subtracting.
The operators were very proficient in arithmetical
calculations; they were trained to use all sorts
of interesting algorithms and shortcuts, and
Comptometer Operators (and their colleague
accounting machine operators) were amongst the
highest-paid clerical staff. My major regret is
that I didn't document all the shortcuts that my
Mother knew - as a programmer I'm sure that they
would have been most useful. Unfortunately all the
conversion cards have long gone as well, but the
thing that sticks with me was the fact that my
Mother could convert just about anything to
decimals and do most of the calculations in her
head!
There was also an electronic comptometer called
the Anita. (I think it was made by Burroughs -
they continued to make big electronic calculators
into the early 1970s) It was exactly the same size
as the mechanical version, and had nixie tube
displays. My experience of them were that they
broke down regularly (They used thermionic valves,
not transistors) and were nowhere near as reliable
as the mechanical version. In fact, they were the
last gasp; I think they were introduced in 1966
and by 1969 the 10-key LSI electronic calculator
was becoming widespread.
Gottfried Ira
>
[...]
> which from a distance resembled SLR camera lenses. These devices were
> law therefore does not apply to this thread.) Can anyone shed any more light
> on these devices, as they were considerably smaller to the rest of the
> devices on display?
The inventor's name is Kurt Herzstark, but I have no idea what
happened to him.
Gottfried
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
, no, not the acid) and then they went and did away with
>>
>> Here's a question...why 'd' for pence?
>
>
And hence pence / suspence / suspender.
John W Hall
<ch...@transdata.co.nz> wrote:
>...The major manufacturers of business calculation
>machines were Burroughs (now Unisys),...
I worked for Burroughs also for a short while.
I recall that an early range of calculators required a mechanical
input to flip something when a carry/borrow occurred. So they put a
Red Button on the keyboard and called it a 'Negative Balance Lock' or
suchlike. Having to press this ensured that the operator was aware
that the balance had gone negative, or reverted to positive after
having been negative. The real purpose of the button was the
mechanical movement they needed.
With the next range of machines they had designed a way to make that
mechanical input unnecessary, so now the sales pitch was "You no
longer have to bother with pressing that fiddly negative balance
button".
Such is the adaptability of the marketing/sales guys (all guys back
then).
'Nuther thing I recall from that time... I was a maintenance guy for
about 350 calculators in a major bank clearing house in Lombard
Street, London. All operated by women. After a few months they became
accustomed to seeing me around, and I faded nto the background. On
Monday mornings their chatter/conversations mostly revolved around
their weekend experiences. Since I was effectively 'not there' no
details were spared. My ears burned but I learned a lot. Even worse
than the time I inadvertently went into the wrong sex washroom at a
gas/petrol station and had to wait till all went quiet before I dared
leave..
fungus
Gottfried Ira wrote:
>
> Paul Grayson wrote:
> >
> [...]
> > The oddest devices were small cylindrical mechanical calculator devices,
> > which from a distance resembled SLR camera lenses. These devices were
> > reputedly designed by a prisoner of the Nazis whilst in captivity. (Godwin's
> > law therefore does not apply to this thread.) Can anyone shed any more light
> > on these devices, as they were considerably smaller to the rest of the
> > devices on display?
>
Most of the '50s calculators were desktop machines. The CURTA fits
nicely in your hand, thus avoiding RSI injuries and stress (I've
got a booklet which explains this somewhere, complete with head
movement angles of desktop/CURTA users, I must scan it...)
> The inventor's name is Kurt Herzstark, but I have no idea what
> happened to him.
>
Check my website: http://www.artlum.com/
--
<\___/>
/ O O \
\_____/ FTB.
Simon Slavin
pa...@shippo.virgin.net (Paul Grayson) wrote:
> How did financial systems deal with this currency system? A standard COBOL
> PIC statement must have been hard to define.
There were four ways I know of:
1) Implement a 'STERLING' variable-type in the language.
2) Hold money as pennies in Binary Coded Decimal variables.
3) Hold money as a number of pounds in floating-point variables.
4) Hold money as pennies in integer variables.
Some versions if COBOL and Fortran had (1). Almost all financial
computers (e.g. IBM instead of DEC who built their computers for
scientists) had (2). If those weren't available most financial
people specified (3) because they thought in pounds, wanted their
variables to hold a number of pounds, and were happy to make up
the odd penny or two out of their own pocket if rounding-errors
got noticable. Programmers preferred (4) and if any of the financial
types actually knew enough about variable types there'd be a nasty
bit at some point in the contract where there'd be a big argument
about the relative merits of (3) and (4).
One of the things that drove the incredible flexibility of variable-
type definition in Algol 68 was the desire to be able to create
variable-types like 'sterling' with 'pound', 'shilling' and 'penny'
components. Of course, this was also used for complex numbers and
vectors.
BCD: binary-coded decimal. You'd use four bits to represent the
numbers from one to ten and have special firmware to add and subtract
numbers in this form. (Multiplication and division were impossible.
You had to convert back and forth.) This made the job of handling
adding-up lots of figures quite easy. A 24-bit word could represent
from 0 to 999999 pounds. A 32-bit word could represent from 0 to
99999999 pounds. For a while, the financial industry drove word-size
mainly because of BCD.
Inevitably, 1/240 turns out to be a recurring figure in binary:
0.000000010001000100010001...
Fortunately you don't have to carry this past the first twenty bits
if you're doing calculations this way.
Oh, and don't write-off the fact that we had farthings: a quarter of
a penny. That adds another two binary places to the precision
needed. I suspect that farthings were the bane of the very early
British programmer's life. Farthings vanished pretty quickly, but
half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
> How did punched cards deal with
> this?
In human-readable form. One defined columns for pounds, shillings
and pence and typed the variables like that. That's another reason
for liking BCD, since the conversion to punch card format was fast.
Note that the techniques I mentioned in this post spread over about
fifty years. The late ones weren't invented when the early ones were
used. The early ones were no longer available when the late ones
were used.
Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | John Peel:
No junk email please. | [My daughter] has modelled herself on you.
| Courtney Love:
| Oh, I'm so sorry.
barnacle
--snip
>Oh, and don't write-off the fact that we had farthings: a quarter of
>a penny. That adds another two binary places to the precision
>needed. I suspect that farthings were the bane of the very early
>British programmer's life. Farthings vanished pretty quickly, but
>half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
indeed they were (or had been removed from circulation sufficiently recently
that large quanties were still available) and oddly enough they were the same
size/weight as the new 2p piece. Slot machines modified for 2p pieces
couldn't tell the difference...as an impecunious schoolboy I had *lots* of
halfpennies...
>
>> How did punched cards deal with
>> this?
>
>In human-readable form. One defined columns for pounds, shillings
>and pence and typed the variables like that. That's another reason
>for liking BCD, since the conversion to punch card format was fast.
>
>Note that the techniques I mentioned in this post spread over about
>fifty years. The late ones weren't invented when the early ones were
>used. The early ones were no longer available when the late ones
>were used.
>
>Simon.
--
barnacle
andy the pugh
slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
> Farthings vanished pretty quickly, but
>half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
And we kept them in the decimal system for quite a long time too.
So it wasn't entirely decimal until, when was it now, about 1985?
Anders Thulin
> IIRC L,S,D stood for the Latin librii, solidii, denarii -- I
> believe the denarius was the smallest coin used by the Romans.
As the name suggests, a denarius was 10 of something -- in this case
10 as. But I believe the as was also split up into semi-ases (if that's what
they was called), and so on down to 12th's and perhaps 24ths of an as.
A denarius was approx. a day's wage.
--
Anders Thulin Anders....@telia.se 040-10 50 63
Telia Prosoft AB, Hjälmaregatan 3, S-201 20 Malmö, Sweden
Paul Scott
>Brian Inglis wrote:
>
>> IIRC L,S,D stood for the Latin librii, solidii, denarii -- I
>> believe the denarius was the smallest coin used by the Romans.
>
> As the name suggests, a denarius was 10 of something -- in this case
>10 as. But I believe the as was also split up into semi-ases (if that's what
>they was called), and so on down to 12th's and perhaps 24ths of an as.
>
half-assed, I believe.
--
Paul Scott
Dave Hansen
<Brian.do...@SystematicSw.ab.ca> wrote:
[...]
>
>IIRC L,S,D stood for the Latin librii, solidii, denarii -- I
>believe the denarius was the smallest coin used by the Romans.
Sorry, but every time I've seen that in theis thread, I kept reading
"Lysergic Acid Diethylamide."
Of course, I'm the kind of guy who laughed at the old mosquito/DDT
limerick...
Regards,
-=Dave
Just my (10-010) cents
I can barely speak for myself, so I certainly can't speak for B-Tree.
Change is inevitable. Progress is not.
Rob Nicholson
Oh you got used to it. I grew up with it, got to 9 years old and they dumped
it just as I'd got the hang of it all.
Rob.
Paul Grayson
>In article <B4709A309...@0.0.0.0>, slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
>--snip
>>Oh, and don't write-off the fact that we had farthings: a quarter of
>>a penny. That adds another two binary places to the precision
>>needed. I suspect that farthings were the bane of the very early
>>half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
>
>that large quanties were still available) and oddly enough they were the same
>size/weight as the new 2p piece. Slot machines modified for 2p pieces
>couldn't tell the difference...as an impecunious schoolboy I had *lots* of
>halfpennies...
In the early 1980's my father acquired a metal detector and travelled all
over the place. He found many old halfpennies, which were not valuable due
to their condition, having been underground for at least 12 years.
To dispose of them he visited a penny arcade at a caravan park and used the
2p-1p change machine, disposing of at least 200 in the process!
--
Paul Grayson, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK.
I'm looking for Unix/Linux work in my area - email for details.
Bill Gates - didn't he play for Middlesbrough?
John Varela
wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 22:39:44 +0000,
> slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
>
> > Farthings vanished pretty quickly, but
> >half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
>
> And we kept them in the decimal system for quite a long time too.
The U.S. minted half-cent coins from 1793 until 1857.
--
John Varela
to e-mail, remove - between mind and spring
Scott Wheeler
>Jesus! What a complex system of currency! How did such a system
>evolve? (It _must_ have evolved, no one would be insane or cruel
>enough to _plan_ such a monstrosity.
Ah, but this is the simplified version. No silver groats to cut in
four to make pennies. No Scottish pounds (with associated four-pound
notes). I think one is still supposed to buy race-horses and pay
Harley St doctor's bills in guineas, though (1gn = Ł1/1/-).
Anyway, it's simpler than our old linear measurements - inches, feet
and yards are familiar, but I think it goes on
six and a quarter yards make one chain
four chains make a rod, pole or perch
ten rods, poles or perches make a furlong
eight furlongs make a mile.
As with most things, the original idea was probably to confuse the
French.
Scott
--
(please de-mung address if replying by email)
Charlie Gibbs
(Peter Seebach) writes:
>In article <850.6T103...@sky.bus.com>,
>Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>
>>Ahh, a.f.c... one of the few remaining places where the first
>>thing most people think when they hear "RPG" isn't "Role-Playing
>>Game"...
>
>And here I was thinking I'd figured out what they wrote advent in.
Oooh, you are sick. But I don't suppose I'm much better - after
porting Advent to our 90/30 running OS/3, I got hold of the Dungeon
source code and did that too. Fourteen thousand lines of FORTRAN,
full of DECisms, plus I had to make it work on those block-mode
mainframe terminals...
--
cgi...@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs)
Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply.
Charlie Gibbs
(John Hughes) writes:
>But I don't really understand your problem. Yes, LSD was a stupid
>system, because it made things harder for people, but computers are
>good at dealing with stupid systems with lots of dumb arithmetic,
...which is why our income tax calculations are so ridiculously
complex; this is one example of why increased computer power
is a two-edged sword.
>CF NASA's use of lb/in/s: only one probe lost so far.
Well, you could also count the Gimli Glider (that airliner that
did a forced landing at an abandoned military airstrip in Manitoba
when it ran out of fuel). Yes, the fact that the fuel gauges were
unserviceable was a contributing factor - but only because it would
have made it easier to spot the Imperial/metric mixup that occurred
during refuelling.
One of my favourite editorial cartoons came out shortly after the
incident. A gas jockey is kneeling on the wing of an airliner,
holding a dipstick and calling out to one of the passengers inside:
"How many feet are in a liter?"
Jose Pina Coelho
Jitze Couperus wrote:
> [...]
> (There will be a ceremony on the occasion of Cobol's 40th birthday
> next January, to be held on the U.S. Navy Vessel "Grace Hopper")
What ? The ceremonial drowning of the last cobol programmer ?
--
Doing AIX support was the most monty-pythonesque
activity available at the time.
Geoff Lane
Trivial - you just learn your 12 and 20 times table ( 4 and 8 helped as
well.) In 18?? the government decided to start to simply matters by
introducing the 2 shilling coin (a florin) - 1/10 of a pound -- however it
took until the early 1970's to actually abolish LSD.
Somewhere I have a small mechanical multi-base calculator that can do simple
arithmetic on LSD - it's about the size of a thin pocket calculator and is
really just a kind of abacus - but very effective and you can get very fast
with practise.
--
Geoff. Lane. | Today's target: 47.639963 N; 122.130295 W. Fire at Will!!
"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
-- Norm Schryer
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
>How did everyday _people_ deal with it?
>
>andy
>-----------------------
How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
jmfb...@aol.com
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>In article <Ap424.1953$Sz5.2...@ptah.visi.com> se...@plethora.net
>(Peter Seebach) writes:
>
>>In article <850.6T103...@sky.bus.com>,
>>Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Ahh, a.f.c... one of the few remaining places where the first
>>>thing most people think when they hear "RPG" isn't "Role-Playing
>>>Game"...
>>
>>And here I was thinking I'd figured out what they wrote advent in.
>
>Oooh, you are sick. But I don't suppose I'm much better - after
>porting Advent to our 90/30 running OS/3, I got hold of the Dungeon
>source code and did that too. Fourteen thousand lines of FORTRAN,
>full of DECisms, plus I had to make it work on those block-mode
>mainframe terminals...
DECisms??? I used to support FOROTS so I might remember some
of our FORTRAN IV.
Also, I was wondering about "block-mode mainframe terminals".
I guess TOPS10 did terminal I/O very differently than regular
I/O.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
donald tees
measure, in fact. Ten chains square is an acre. The furlong was the length
of a furrow on a ten acre field.
Scott Wheeler wrote in message <2yxMONFr8+2H3h...@4ax.com>...
>On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 18:36:52 GMT, ada...@mostcow.com (Andy) wrote:
>
>>Jesus! What a complex system of currency! How did such a system
>>evolve? (It _must_ have evolved, no one would be insane or cruel
>>enough to _plan_ such a monstrosity.
>
>Ah, but this is the simplified version. No silver groats to cut in
>four to make pennies. No Scottish pounds (with associated four-pound
>notes). I think one is still supposed to buy race-horses and pay
>Harley St doctor's bills in guineas, though (1gn = £1/1/-).
Scott Wheeler
wrote:
> The furlong was the length
>of a furrow on a ten acre field.
No, it was just the length of a furrow - the size of the field didn't
matter, but it would have originated back in the days of strip farms -
and I've seen those only six feet wide.
fungus
Scott Wheeler wrote:
>
> six and a quarter yards make one chain
22 yards actually - the distance between two wickets.
> four chains make a rod, pole or perch
Nope. A rod/pole was a big stick carried around by
builders (hence the name). It was 5.5 yards long
(16.5 feet).
A perch was originaly a big stick, but later became
a volume. A perch was a pile of stone one rod long
by one foot wide by one cubit high).
> ten rods, poles or perches make a furlong
Ten chains, I think you'll find...
> eight furlongs make a mile.
>
Correct (phew!).
> As with most things, the original idea was probably to
> confuse the French.
>
I assure you, the French responded with an even more complex
system. Fortunately for the world, they realised the subterfuge
wasn't working and invented metric instead.
PS: So who are the Americans trying to confuse? Each other?
Dave Hansen
wrote:
[...]
>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
A pint's a pound the world around. After that, it's mostly binary:
two pints in a quart, two quarts in a... uh... half-gallon, two half
gallons in a gallon. I haven't measured anything in "barrels" or
"hogsheads" recently. Or ever...
Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
two tablespoons in an ounce, uh... three teaspoons in a tablespoon...
Oh, well.
I don't deal much with yards. Anything too large to be measured in
feet gets measured in miles. Conversions between feet an miles are
usually approximate: "Our cruising altitude today will be 33,000
feet." "Oh, that's more than 6 miles!"
My shoes are just a hair over 12 inches long, which is useful for
estimating small distances.
When dealing with the rest of the world, a liter is close to a quart,
and a meter is close to a yard. Ten kilometers is about 6 miles, ten
miles is about 16 kilometers. For everything else (or anything that
needs to be accurate), I've got my trusty HP 48 handy...
Derek Peschel
fungus <sp...@egg.chips.and.spam.com> wrote:
>Scott Wheeler wrote:
>> As with most things, the original idea was probably to
>> confuse the French.
>>
>
>I assure you, the French responded with an even more complex
>system. Fortunately for the world, they realised the subterfuge
>wasn't working and invented metric instead.
>
If you know anything about the French system, I'd love to hear it. I was
looking for information about the early metric system (which differs from
the modern SI system in interesting ways) and came across references to the
toise and a few other units I forget. But I have no idea how it all fits
together. "Toise" is an interesting word though! (It's pronounced "twahz".)
>
>
>PS: So who are the Americans trying to confuse? Each other?
We're trying to confuse ALL the metric countries, or perhaps all the
countries that haven't gone metric yet (are there any left?).
-- Derek
Ceefax
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:55:51 GMT, p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete)
>wrote:
>
>[...]
>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
>A pint's a pound the world around.
Ceefax
Ben Clifford
>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>A pint's a pound the world around.
But is that an American pint or Imperial pint?
I have also heard the saying, "A pint of water weighs a pound and a
quarter".
This was discussed probably 3 or 4 years ago in alt.folklore.urban. I think.
>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
8 oz of feathers?
>My shoes are just a hair over 12 inches long, which is useful for
>estimating small distances.
I once had a stride that at a stretch was a metre give or take a couple of cm.
Very useful when I was a little boy and we had to estimate distances at
school in lessons.
Of course then I grew up and my stride got longer and also I no longer found
it useful to be able to estimate the size of the playground within 1%.
Ben Clifford
<slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost> wrote:
>British programmer's life. Farthings vanished pretty quickly, but
>half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
Yes, they were indeed.
There was an old half-penny coin = 1/(2*240) pounds.
and a new half-penny coin = 1/(2*100) pounds.
barnacle
>In article <ufyabb4...@microlite.CalvaCom.FR> jo...@AtlanTech.COM
>(John Hughes) writes:
>
>>But I don't really understand your problem. Yes, LSD was a stupid
>>system, because it made things harder for people, but computers are
>>good at dealing with stupid systems with lots of dumb arithmetic,
>
>complex; this is one example of why increased computer power
>is a two-edged sword.
>
>>CF NASA's use of lb/in/s: only one probe lost so far.
>
>Well, you could also count the Gimli Glider (that airliner that
>did a forced landing at an abandoned military airstrip in Manitoba
>when it ran out of fuel). Yes, the fact that the fuel gauges were
>unserviceable was a contributing factor - but only because it would
>have made it easier to spot the Imperial/metric mixup that occurred
>during refuelling.
>
>One of my favourite editorial cartoons came out shortly after the
>incident. A gas jockey is kneeling on the wing of an airliner,
>holding a dipstick and calling out to one of the passengers inside:
>"How many feet are in a liter?"
>
A litre of water's three foot three,
it's longer than a kilogramme you see...
--
barnacle
barnacle
>On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 07:13:57 GMT, barnacle was reputed to have muttered:
>>In article <B4709A309...@0.0.0.0>,
> slavins.at.hearsay.demon.co.uk@localhost (Simon Slavin) wrote:
>>--snip
>>>Oh, and don't write-off the fact that we had farthings: a quarter of
>>>a penny. That adds another two binary places to the precision
>>>needed. I suspect that farthings were the bane of the very early
>>>half-pennies were still around when we decimalised, I think.
>>
>>that large quanties were still available) and oddly enough they were the same
>>size/weight as the new 2p piece. Slot machines modified for 2p pieces
>>couldn't tell the difference...as an impecunious schoolboy I had *lots* of
>>halfpennies...
>
>In the early 1980's my father acquired a metal detector and travelled all
>over the place. He found many old halfpennies, which were not valuable due
>to their condition, having been underground for at least 12 years.
>
>To dispose of them he visited a penny arcade at a caravan park and used the
>2p-1p change machine, disposing of at least 200 in the process!
>
A Yorkshireman after my own heart!
--
barnacle
Nick Spalding
> On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:55:51 GMT, p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete)
> wrote:
>
> [...]
> >How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
> A pint's a pound the world around.
You fall at the first fence. In Imperial measure a pint is 20
ounces while a pound is 16. And the ounces are not precisely the
same as USAn ones either.
--
Nick Spalding
Dave Hansen
Clifford) wrote:
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:59:53 GMT, Dave Hansen <dha...@btree.com> wrote:
>
>>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
>>A pint's a pound the world around.
>
>But is that an American pint or Imperial pint?
Of course. The was the "pint". ;-)
[...]
>
>>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
>
>8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
>8 oz of feathers?
What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
Ben Clifford
>>
>>8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
>>8 oz of feathers?
>What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
I always thought that cups was volume not weight?
Having never actually
used the system, I don't actually know.
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
>> A pint's a pound the world around.
This is a modificaton of a turn-of-the-century saying that was somewhat
less widely known: A dollar a pound, the world around. This universal
price constant applied to patternmaking for cast iron products -- that
is, if you wanted a (carved wooden) pattern from which to cast steam
engine parts, domestic radiators or cast-iron children's toys, you could
expect it to cost one dollar per pound of the finished iron casting.
This, of course, was back when a troy ounce of gold was worth $20.
Various posters interacted to say:
>>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
>
> 8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
> 8 oz of feathers?
A fluid ounce is defined in terms of water. How quickly the British
have forgotten their imperial system of measure after they went metric.
To return to the original topic of this thread, financial systems have
no more trouble with pounds shillings and pence than they do with decimal
numbers! Recall that today's computers are, in their guts, binary
machines, where number bases like 10 and 12 are far from natural.
Base 16, however, is a snap, so pounds and ounces (avdp) are easy!
On the other hand, financial software that could deal with pounds, guineas
shillings etc would be rather more fun to write than merely dealing with
decimal currency. Even decimal, though, is wonderful stuff on binary
machines. See my web page http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/bcd/ for some
material on this issue.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
fungus
"Jacqui or (maybe) Pete" wrote:
>
> How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
The best example I've seen is people measuring the fat content
of foods using grams.
eg. "A 12 ounce steak has xxx grams of fat"
Charlie Gibbs
(jmfbahciv) writes:
>In article <777.9T67...@sky.bus.com>,
>"Charlie Gibbs" <cgi...@sky.bus.com> wrote:
>
>> Fourteen thousand lines of FORTRAN,
>>full of DECisms, plus I had to make it work on those block-mode
>>mainframe terminals...
>
>DECisms??? I used to support FOROTS so I might remember some
>of our FORTRAN IV.
Let's see... how about the use of .AND. and .OR. as bitwise
logical operators? I had to replace all of those with calls
to small assembly-language functions. No other FORTRAN compiler
knew about radix-50 constants either, so that was another area
that needed a lot of rework. And, as a finishing touch, I had
to decrypt the message file, translate it from ASCII to EBCDIC,
then re-encrypt it. Amazingly, it still worked afterwards.
>Also, I was wondering about "block-mode mainframe terminals".
>I guess TOPS10 did terminal I/O very differently than regular
>I/O.
Depends on what you call "regular". Sperry's Uniscope protcol
was much like IBM's bisync. It was designed to send files across
the country, not bytes across the room. Terminals used the screen
buffer as a holding area; keystrokes didn't go near the line but
just updated the screen image. When you pressed the TRANSMIT key
the terminal would wait for the next poll from the mainframe, then
send the entire screenload at once (framed by appropriate SOH,
terminal address, STX, ETX, and block check characters, of course).
I think the idea of mainframe data communications was: "This stuff
is damned complicated, and we're not going to let you forget it!"
Even when I worked as an SA in the Vancouver branch (and therefore
was supposedly one of the gurus that the customers would come to
for help), we'd set up a new customer's terminal network by copying
someone else's working configuration and tweaking it to meet the
new customer's needs. The only person in all of Canada who I think
really understood ICAM (integrated communications access method,
the software that actually handled the terminals) was in Montreal.
We had to fly him out a couple of times to solve some really complex
problems (e.g. dialup access). After one session, once he got things
going we were sitting around chewing the fat. While he was talking
he was scrambling and unscrambling a Rubik's cube. That's the kind
of mind you needed to understand that stuff, I guess.
charles
Dave Hansen wrote:
>
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 17:18:47 +0000, be...@krustbustr.benzone.org (Ben
> Clifford) wrote:
>
> >8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
> >8 oz of feathers?
>
> What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
ounce of gold
gold in troy weight - 1 ounce =480 grains
feathers in avoirdupois 437.5 grains
the grain is the same in both systems
more fun the troy pound has 12 ounces but the avoirdupois has 16 so a
POUND of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers
like trying to figure how many gallons in a barrel- depends on what is
in the barrel
think the hogsheads were the same, depended on the contents.
Charles
charles
Dave Hansen wrote:
>
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 17:18:47 +0000, be...@krustbustr.benzone.org (Ben
> Clifford) wrote:
>
> >8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
> >8 oz of feathers?
>
> What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
ounce of gold
gold in troy weight - 1 ounce =480 grains
feathers in avoirdupois 437.5 grains
the grain is the same in both systems
more fun the troy pound has 12 ounces but the avoirdupois has 16 so a
POUND of gold weighs less than a pound of feathers
like trying to figure how many gallons in a barrel- depends on whats is
Lord Xarph and his Big Unruly Mob
> How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
Wild guesses. How else are we supposed to explain NASA?
-Lx?
--
Lord Xarph
xa...@xarph.net
http://www.xarph.net/
INDUSTRIAL BUNNIE REVOLUTION
John Varela
Clifford) wrote:
> >>>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
> >>
> >>8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
> >>8 oz of feathers?
>
> >What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
>
> I always thought that cups was volume not weight?
>
> Having never actually
> used the system, I don't actually know.
The ounce is a unit of both weight/mass and volume. Thus, with 16
ounces in a pound and 16 ounces in a pint...
--
John Varela
to e-mail, remove - between mind and spring
John Varela
> Dave Hansen wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:55:51 GMT, p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete)
> > wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> > >How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
> >
> > A pint's a pound the world around.
>
> You fall at the first fence. In Imperial measure a pint is 20
> ounces while a pound is 16. And the ounces are not precisely the
> same as USAn ones either.
But the US pint is still 16 ounces. Thus the discrepancy between
A pint's a pound the world around (US)
and
A pint of water's a pound and a quarter. (UK)
fungus
Derek Peschel wrote:
>
> If you know anything about the French system, I'd love to hear it.
I don't really know much about it, except that it was apparently
much worse than the English system.
> I was Looking for information about the early metric system
> (which differs from the modern SI system in interesting ways)
The best reference for the English/metric measures is probably
Isaac Asimov's "Realm of Measure". Well worth buying if you
can find a copy...
David Scheidt
: On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:59:53 GMT, Dave Hansen <dha...@btree.com> wrote:
:>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
:>A pint's a pound the world around.
: But is that an American pint or Imperial pint?
Who cares as long as there are more of them?
: I have also heard the saying, "A pint of water weighs a pound and a
: quarter".
that would of course be an imperial pint.
David
--
dsch...@enteract.com
Yes, but they forgot to put in the essential checkbox:
"I am not a brain-damaged lemur on crack". -- Mark Hughes </a>
fungus
charles wrote:
>
> like trying to figure how many gallons in a barrel,
> depended on the contents.
Usually 31.5 gallons.
> hogsheads were the same,
>
No. A hogshead is seven firkins (half a pipe).
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
>
>The ounce is a unit of both weight/mass and volume. Thus, with 16
>ounces in a pound and 16 ounces in a pint...
20 ounces in a pint where I originated...
Ben Clifford
>ounces in a pound and 16 ounces in a pint...
ahh, I see. I've always seen the latter referred to as FlOz. And I don't
know how many there are in a pint round here.
Ben Clifford
>> 8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
>> 8 oz of feathers?
>
>A fluid ounce is defined in terms of water. How quickly the British
>have forgotten their imperial system of measure after they went metric.
That was just me failing to realise that he meant fluid ounces. Every time
I've seen the ounce used to measure volume it has had a fluid qualifier. So
without that, I assumed that he meant the other one.
Nick Spalding
It wouldn't make any difference if the fluid is water.
--
Nick Spalding
Bruce Ediger
>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
I think that only about 1 in 5 USA citizens understand our "cooking"
measurements (cups, pints, teaspoon, tablespoon), which overlaps
with our weight and volume (ounce, pound, ton, fluid ounce, quart,
gallon). The other 4 plague that one-in-five with questions like,
"how many cups in a pint?" and "how many tablespoons in a quarter cup?"
The whole thing is just so very dreary and earth-bound: we rate
engines, even Space Shuttle Main Engines in terms of "horsepower",
and thermodynamics people insist on using the "pound mass", which
requires one to insert factors of 32.2 or 1/32.2 into every equation.
I find it remarkable that only the Mars Climate Orbiter is the only
spacecraft lost due to English unit confusion.
--
Everything leads to weariness - a weariness too great for words. Our eyes
can never see enough to be satisfied; our ears can never hear enough.
fungus
Andy wrote:
>
> I believe it is US and Botswana are the only two that are holding out.
> I would LOVE it if the US went metric!
>
Why?
Have you got something against Botswana???
Ben Clifford
>> >> 8 oz of feathers?
>> >
>> >A fluid ounce is defined in terms of water. How quickly the British
>> >have forgotten their imperial system of measure after they went metric.
>>
>> That was just me failing to realise that he meant fluid ounces. Every time
>> I've seen the ounce used to measure volume it has had a fluid qualifier. So
>> without that, I assumed that he meant the other one.
>
>It wouldn't make any difference if the fluid is water.
But does if you are measuring the volume of something that is not water.
Like lead and feathers.
But this whole thread is down to me misunderstanding that the original poster
used "ounces" to refer to what I am used to as "fluid ounces". Which I think
is yet another difference between American and English English.
Is there anybody else from the UK in here who would refer to
fluid ounces as just ounces? Maybe when such units were in more
common use?
Nick Spalding
> But does if you are measuring the volume of something that is not water.
> Like lead and feathers.
>
> But this whole thread is down to me misunderstanding that the original poster
> used "ounces" to refer to what I am used to as "fluid ounces". Which I think
> is yet another difference between American and English English.
>
> Is there anybody else from the UK in here who would refer to
> fluid ounces as just ounces? Maybe when such units were in more
> common use?
Context is everything. In a context where it is clear that volume is under
discussion I might well do.
--
Nick Spalding
donald tees
Andy wrote in message <384ee8c3...@news.fsr.net>...
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:55:51 GMT, p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete)
>wrote:
>
>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
>nation's slow acceptance. The only thing i deal with that involves
>ounces is pot, and i never buy more than an eighth of an ounce, so
>conversion is unnecessary.
>
Metric works better there too. One joint to the gram. 29 joints to the
ounce. Now, how to you convert from lids to bricks?
Simon Slavin
ada...@mostcow.com (Andy) wrote:
> pa...@shippo.virgin.net (Paul Grayson) wrote:
>
> >[snip] There were 12 pennies to the
> >shilling, and 20 shillings to the pound, making 240 pennies to the pound.
> >The halfpenny was also legal tender, and prior to about 1957 there was also
> >a coin called a farthing, which was equal to a quarter of a penny. I'm too
> >young to remember much about this myself, but some of the coins
> >(notably the
> >sixpence) were legal tender once decimalisation occurred.
>
> Jesus! What a complex system of currency! How did such a system
> evolve? (It _must_ have evolved, no one would be insane or cruel
> enough to _plan_ such a monstrosity.
From unrelated components, of course. There was a unit of
currency called the shilling. It was used by big business and
worth quite a bit (about a month's wages). Its value went up
and down as the medium of exchage -- a month's work -- became
rare or plentiful -- high employment or low employment.
There was another unit of currency called the penny. It was
the general medium of exchange for a bulk item (baker's dozen
of loaves, a month's rent, travel from Oxford to London). It
was divided into quarters so you could buy a single loaf or
a jug of milk.
Another unit was used by huge business: the banks, shipbuilders,
those who dealt in metals or in entire shiploads of goods. It
was equivalent to the cost of a pound of silver.
There were also groats and sovereigns. I'm keeping quiet about
them.
These all existed independently. If you were the kind of person
who dealt in pounds, there was never any need for you to
encounter a penny. If you paid rent of a shilling a month for
your house, you could never thing of seeing a whole pound. The
different units of currency had constantly-shifting exchange
rates depending on demand-and-suppply. If three trading ships
came in at the same month all laden with goods, the value of
the pound would go up with respect to the shilling and penny.
Eventually there was so much interplay between the different
currencies that it became necessary to fix the exchange rates
to stop a rich man keeping all his wealth in pennies because
he thought that the pound was going to go down. At about that
time, a pound was worth about twenty shillings and a shilling
was worth about twelve pennies, so that's how they fixed it.
> How did everyday _people_ deal with it?
Very well. No need to know what a shilling was until you were
old enough to pay rent. No need to know what a pound was
unless you were a clerk, in which case you were trained. More
recently (i.e. when I went to school) it was a standard part
of early schooling.
Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | John Peel:
No junk email please. | [My daughter] has modelled herself on you.
| Courtney Love:
| Oh, I'm so sorry.
Chris Espinosa
<snippage of excellent summary of the evolution of British coinage>
> There were also groats and sovereigns. I'm keeping quiet about
> them.
But can you explain guineas? And why certain professions (barristers,
auctioneers, real estate) quoted prices in guineas rather than pounds?
Chris
John F. Eldredge
Clifford) wrote:
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:59:53 GMT, Dave Hansen <dha...@btree.com> wrote:
>>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
>
>8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
>8 oz of feathers?
Just to confuse matters, there are two different units called the
ounce. One is a measure of volume (and used mostly for liquids), the
other is a measure of weight. You have to rely upon context to tell
which one is meant.
--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://www.netforward.com/poboxes/?eldredge/
--
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace." - Woodrow Wilson
b...@mycomputer.example.net
: I believe it is US and Botswana are the only two that are holding out.
: I would LOVE it if the US went metric!
The USA adopted the metric system in 1866. US customary measures have
been defined as ratios of metric units for more than 100 years (there
are no independent physical standards for feet, pounds, etc.). The
old units simply never have been made illegal for trade (with a few
exceptions).
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
>It wouldn't make any difference if the fluid is water.
He means that the volume of a fluid ounce is defined by the volume of
an ounce of water.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
>: I have also heard the saying, "A pint of water weighs a pound and a
>: quarter".
There were a lot of rhymes advertised by the UK government one time
they were trying to get people to talk metric. I recall "a litre of
water's a pint and three quarters" and "a tumpty tumpty tump of jam
weighs about a kilogram".
Didn't work. People still refer to "a two-pound bag of sugar" even
though you haven't been able to buy anything other than a kilo for a
decade or so.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
>I think many have done what i've done -- convert to metric despite our
>nation's slow acceptance. The only thing i deal with that involves
>ounces is pot, and i never buy more than an eighth of an ounce, so
>conversion is unnecessary.
I recall trying to explain (many years ago and over a pint of
_scrumpy_ , dear god) to our local dealer why he was failing to
exactly divide his bulk purchase into quarters with a metric scale.
The idea that no number of grams was *exactly* an ounce was somehow
too much for his frazzled brain.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
>p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete) wrote:
>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>
>The whole thing is just so very dreary and earth-bound: we rate
>engines, even Space Shuttle Main Engines in terms of "horsepower",
>and thermodynamics people insist on using the "pound mass", which
>requires one to insert factors of 32.2 or 1/32.2 into every equation.
In the UK they are still fighting a rear-guard action over the
temperature scale, with rousing battle cries such as "I don't
understand all this centergrade stuff and I don't see why I should
have to". So weather forecasts always state both. This has only
been going on for about twenty years.
My favourite, though, was a Canadian telling me how "it got down to
minus 40 sometimes - and I'm talking fahrenheit here, not celsius".
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>What weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold?
If you are meaning ounces as a measure of weight, the ounce of
gold weighs more.
Gold and silver are weighed using the Troy weight system where an
ounce is 480 grains. Feathers are weighed with the mundane
avoirdupois system where there are 437.5 grains per ounce.
Had you asked about a pound of gold and a pound of feather, then
the feathers would weight more. There are only twelve Troy ounces to
the Troy pound.
If you are meaning ounces as a measure of volume, the gold would
weigh more.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
Clifford) wrote:
>Is there anybody else from the UK in here who would refer to
>fluid ounces as just ounces? Maybe when such units were in more
>common use?
>
No, we'd always say fluid ounces.
Heinz W. Wiggeshoff
Jacqui or maybe) Pete (p...@gol.com) writes:
>
> My favourite, though, was a Canadian telling me how "it got down to
> minus 40 sometimes - and I'm talking fahrenheit here, not celsius".
The mercury in his/her brain had frozen. Freezen. Whatever.
Derek Peschel
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete <p...@gol.com> wrote:
>There were a lot of rhymes advertised by the UK government one time
>they were trying to get people to talk metric. I recall "a litre of
>water's a pint and three quarters" and "a tumpty tumpty tump of jam
>weighs about a kilogram".
It's "two and a quarter pounds of jam...". I have no idea why I know this
(it's probably in a '70s book I have about converting to metric).
>Didn't work. People still refer to "a two-pound bag of sugar" even
>though you haven't been able to buy anything other than a kilo for a
>decade or so.
What about younger people? I always assumed the change would stick, _after_
a few generations. But if everyone is talking pounds/inches/miles
(including kids) then the change will take longer.
-- Derek
fungus
>
>The whole thing is just so very dreary and earth-bound: we rate
>engines, even Space Shuttle Main Engines in terms of "horsepower",
And given that the average human can produce something like
ten horsepower, it must have been a very small, very sick horse...
donald tees
just does not seem that useful for *body temperature*. Two narrow a range
with no decimals.
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete wrote in message <3856fc30...@nnrp.gol.com>...
>On 8 Dec 1999 08:23:58 -0700, bed...@csn.net (Bruce Ediger) wrote:
>
>>p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete) wrote:
>>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>>
>
>>The whole thing is just so very dreary and earth-bound: we rate
>>engines, even Space Shuttle Main Engines in terms of "horsepower",
>>and thermodynamics people insist on using the "pound mass", which
>>requires one to insert factors of 32.2 or 1/32.2 into every equation.
>
>In the UK they are still fighting a rear-guard action over the
>temperature scale, with rousing battle cries such as "I don't
>understand all this centergrade stuff and I don't see why I should
>have to". So weather forecasts always state both. This has only
>been going on for about twenty years.
>
Will Rose
[...]
: To return to the original topic of this thread, financial systems have
: no more trouble with pounds shillings and pence than they do with decimal
: numbers! Recall that today's computers are, in their guts, binary
: machines, where number bases like 10 and 12 are far from natural.
: Base 16, however, is a snap, so pounds and ounces (avdp) are easy!
Yes, but it's fourteen pounds to one stone; how did the seven get in
there? Lost parity bit? And how many scruples are there in a dram?
David Given
Chris Espinosa <c...@apple.com> writes:
[...]
> But can you explain guineas? And why certain professions (barristers,
> auctioneers, real estate) quoted prices in guineas rather than pounds?
A guinea was a pound plus commission (usually a shilling). If you bought a
house for twenty guineas, then twenty pounds went to the seller, and
twenty shillings went to the estate agent equivalent.
I forget whether the value changed depending on how much commission you
paid.
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | ...but hexapodia *is* a key insight!
| Play: dgi...@iname.com |
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
Jacqui or (maybe) Pete
wrote:
>I've been using Celsius for years now, and still cannot get use to it. It
>just does not seem that useful for *body temperature*. Two narrow a range
>with no decimals.
The fahrenheit scale makes sense in western europe: it's based on the
idea that zero is as cold as it gets and 100 is as hot as it gets.
Less intuitive in other parts of the world, of course.
Dave Hansen
<eldr...@poboxes.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 17:18:47 +0000, be...@krustbustr.benzone.org (Ben
>Clifford) wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:59:53 GMT, Dave Hansen <dha...@btree.com> wrote:
>>>Going the other way, you have two cups in a pint, 8 ounces in a cup,
>>
>>8 oz of what? Surely, 8oz of lead would be a different cuppage to
>>8 oz of feathers?
>
>Just to confuse matters, there are two different units called the
>ounce. One is a measure of volume (and used mostly for liquids), the
>other is a measure of weight. You have to rely upon context to tell
>which one is meant.
Actually, there are more than that. There's fluid ounces (29.573 ml)
for measuring the volume of liquids, troy ounces (31.1 g) for
measuring the weight of precious metals and apothecary goods, and
ounces avoirdupois (28.35 g), for measuring the weight of pretty much
everything else. There's also something called "dry measure" with
units of pint, quart, peck and bushel for measuring quantities of
fruits, grains, and whatnot. 1 pint dry is 0.551 l, while 1 pint
liquid is 0.473 l. Neat, huh?
Regards,
-=Dave
Just my (10-010) cents
I can barely speak for myself, so I certainly can't speak for B-Tree.
Change is inevitable. Progress is not.
Ian Stirling
>>p...@gol.com (Jacqui or (maybe) Pete) wrote:
>>>How do people in the USA deal with pints, pounds, ounces, yards etc?
>>The whole thing is just so very dreary and earth-bound: we rate
>>engines, even Space Shuttle Main Engines in terms of "horsepower",
<snip>
>In the UK they are still fighting a rear-guard action over the
>temperature scale, with rousing battle cries such as "I don't
>understand all this centergrade stuff and I don't see why I should
>have to". So weather forecasts always state both. This has only
>been going on for about twenty years.
It's been mainly lost.
If farenheight is mentioned at all, it's generally only one or two
points, where centigrade might be mentioned 3-4 times as much.
As a test, I just turned on the BBC News24 weather, (10:57AM broadcast)
and the forecaster did not actually mention temperature, merely "cold,
wet, wintery type adjectives", the temperature (in C (Or else it's going
to be reeeely cold, if it was F :) )) was plastered all
over the map, in little yellow bubbles.
No mention of F at all.
--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inqui...@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
Things a surgeon should never say:
Better save that for the autopsy.
Simon
> Yes, but it's fourteen pounds to one stone; how did the seven get in
> there? Lost parity bit? And how many scruples are there in a dram?
>
Simon.
Dave Hansen
wrote:
>I've been using Celsius for years now, and still cannot get use to it. It
>just does not seem that useful for *body temperature*. Two narrow a range
>with no decimals.
And somehow "I had a fever of 39 (and a half)!" doesn't have the
impact of "I had a fever of 103!"
Ben Harris
>Clifford) wrote:
>
>>Is there anybody else from the UK in here who would refer to
>>fluid ounces as just ounces? Maybe when such units were in more
>>common use?
>>
>No, we'd always say fluid ounces.
More to the point, even they're not much used. I'd refer to a pint, a
half-pint and a quarter-pint, and then probably lapse into tablespoons if I
needed anything smaller. Of course, I only use Imperial measures for
cooking and the suchlike. Serious things get done in metric.
--
Ben Harris
Unix Support, University of Cambridge Computing Service.
The opinions above are mine alone.