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 Farthing |
 Halfpenny |
 Penny |
 Threepence |
 Sixpence |
 Shilling |
 Florin |
 Half Crown |
Notes were fully printed (as opposed
to some previous hand-written 'promissory' notes) from 1855 and, until 1928,
all notes were 'white notes', printed in black and with a blank reverse. During
the 20th century white notes were issued in denominations between £5 and £1000,
but in the 18th and 19th centuries there were also notes in £1 and £2 denominations.
In 1921 the Bank of England gained the legal monopoly on issue of banknotes
in England and Wales, a process that started with the Bank Charter Act of 1844,
restricting the ability of other banks to issue notes. Following this, the Bank
of England's first issue of ten shilling and £1 notes was on 22nd November 1928
when it took over responsibility for these denominations from the Treasury,
who had issued the notes three days after the 1914 declaration of war in order
to remove the sovereign and half sovereign gold coins from circulation. The
1928 notes were the first coloured banknotes and the first to be printed on
both sides.
World War II actually saw a reversal of this practice when, in order to combat
forgery, higher denomination notes (up to as high as £1,000) were removed from
circulation.
During World War II the German 'operation Bernhard' attempted to counterfeit
various notes between £5 and £50 in 1943, producing some 500,000 notes a month.
Although most of these ended in Allied hands at the end of the war, forgeries
appeared frequently for long afterwards, leading to denominations of banknotes
above £5 being removed from circulation.
5 shilling 'crown' coins were once in circulation, but since the 19th century
they have only really been issued as 'commemorative' coins on special occasions,
with varying values. The most recent ones being of £5 value.
Gold coins were not reintroduced into general circulation, but gold 'sovereigns'
and 'half sovereigns' were still being minted, with their value dependent on
the current gold exchange rate rather than any denomination.
One term still in common use, but long since (1813) unsupported by an actual
coin, was 'guinea', a value of 21 shillings, again discontinued because gold
content was worth much more.
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Until 1971, when the British coinage
was converted to decimalisation, British currency was calculated in pounds,
shillings and pence, based on the Latin names Librae, Solidii and Denarii or
£. s. d.
The shilling was also denoted by the slash symbol /, which is also called a
solidus for this reason e.g. 1 shilling and six pence would be commonly stated
as 1/6d and this sum would be spoken as 'one and six'. One shilling (i.e. one
shilling and no pence) would be commonly stated as 1/-.
The British Pound was divided into 240 pennies (or pence) rather than 100, and
sums were expressed in terms of pounds, shillings and pence where: £1=20 shillings
(20s) 1 shilling=12 pence (12d) Thus: £1=240 pence.
The penny was further sub-divided at various times, though these divisions gradually
vanished as inflation made them irrelevant: 1 penny = 2 halfpennies and (earlier)
4 farthings (half-farthing, third-farthing, and quarter-farthing coins were
actually minted in the late 1800s but circulated only in certain British colonies
and not in the UK itself ). The farthing (31st December 1960) and halfpenny
(31st July 1969) were the only sub-divisions surviving into the Sixties.
£1 and 10 shilling denominations were notes rather than coins. Causing
further confusion, there were different names for different denominations of
money in common 'slang' use. Perhaps the best-known of these were 'bob' for
a shilling, and 'quid' for a pound. A farthing was a 'mag', a silver threepence
was a 'joey' and the later cupro-nickel threepence coin was called a threepenny
(pronounced 'threpny') bit, a sixpence was a 'tanner' , a shilling was a 'bob',
the two-shilling coin was 'two bob' or a 'florin' and the 2/6d coin, or half-crown,
was 'half a dollar'.
The pre-decimalisation coins with exact decimal equivalent values continued
in use after 1971 alongside the new coins, albeit with new names, with the shilling
becoming the 5p coin and the two shilling florin equating to 10p. The others
were withdrawn almost immediately, with the exception of the old sixpence (2.5p)
which lasted until 1980.
| METRICATION British industry has, historically, been opposed to metrication using the argument that the bulk of their exports were shipped to countries that were using imperial measurement systems. However, by the Sixties fairly significant changes in trade patterns, and the adoption of metrication by other countries, weakened their case to the point where, in 1965, the Federation of British Industry (now CBI) implemented the changeover to the metric system, albeit on a 'voluntary' basis. Before the Metrication Board was set up in 1969, the initiative was overseen by the BSI (British Standards Institution) and The Royal Society who carried out much of the necessary background work with the transport and engineering sectors. Metric compliance continued to be handled on a 'voluntary' basis until 1973, when Britain joined the EEC and inherited an obligation to adapt British law to comply with existing EEC directives. Although road signs have evolved to be more consistent with European standards they have never been subject to specific metrication. Prior to the 1970s metrication, distances on the UK's rail network were stated in miles and chains, with speed limits quoted in miles per hour. These units were retained by British Rail but London Transport recalculated their Underground network in kilometres, measured using Ongar as point zero. The metrication of admiralty charts began in 1967 but the Royal Navy showed no inclination to fully adopt metrication, preferring to state both measurements i.e. miles/cables and metres for distance and fathoms and metres for depth. The most bizarre imperial/metric occurrence is probably that imperial units were used in the design of the supersonic BAC Bristol 198. Due to costs, BAC ended up entering into a joint venture with Sud-Aviation of France that culminated with the production of Concorde. The sections designed by the British company were done in imperial measurements and those by the French in metric - amazing that it ever got off the ground! |
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Original Material Copyright SixtiesCity
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