From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,18f7f6e041b3e0bf X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-08-16 08:49:51 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Information Systems Annex was RE: Dispatching and generics - Date: 16 Aug 2002 08:49:51 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <5ee5b646.0208160749.25f7dc04@posting.google.com> References: <5ee5b646.0208150126.ac9f65e@posting.google.com> <3D5BD43F.D85D3CF3@san.rr.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.14 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1029512991 18302 127.0.0.1 (16 Aug 2002 15:49:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Aug 2002 15:49:51 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:28116 Date: 2002-08-16T15:49:51+00:00 List-Id: Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen) wrote in message news:... > They make the government change it to a decimal-based > system to suit computers. That really was a small part of the motivation behind the change, Britain's monetary system was a real mess before the change, with crowns, guineas and pounds all in simultaneous use as the primary currency unit. Also the introduction of VAT really means that you want it to be easy (for people) to compute percentages. It also makes comparison shopping much easier. As for computers, they could handle the old stuff just fine, and indeed my uncle worked for Plesseys where one of their early computers had registers implemented with a row of decatrons (for the pounds) a binary device and a decatron (for the shillings) a duodecatron (12 state decvice) for the pence :-) (this was a tube machine, where decimal devices made some reasonable hardware sense)