Lionel Fanthorpe

Co-published by W.H. Farrar, and the Reverend Robert Lionel Fanthorpe. Yes, the same Reverend Robert Lionel Fanthorpe of Fortean TV, President of the British UFO Research Association and the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena. As well as arguably the best worst Sci-Fi author of all time.
So, who you may wonder is 'Spencer'?
Well, that would simply be John Spencer & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Mystery solved. No need for further supernatural investigation - sorry Lional. ;)

A more pertinent question should be: why would anyone be reading a handbook of essential facts and information on the metric system 47 years after it was introduced to the U.K. ?
Well, like many things that most people take for granted today, we stop questioning why something is or even why it exists because it becomes so much a part of everyday life that it seems to fade into the background and become invisible.
I was just old enough to remember decimalisation and grew up with the term New Pence. Practically, what this meant for me personally was brand new school books, as all the old ones with any reference to shillings and the old familiar imperial coinage were thrown out. I also inherited lots of 'real' coinage to play with as more and more stashes were discovered around the house, down the backs of sofas and in stick-pin jars after decimal day when they became worthless literally over night. Great news for pirate games!

Reading this book today (following yet another recent change in the currency of the U.K.), I re-discovered some interesting fact which I'd given virtually no thought to in all the time I'd been using the new decimal currency over the past forty years. For instance; the bronze coinage had a direct weight/value relationship: 2p is twice the weight of 1p and four times the weight of 1/2p. This kind of relationship was not applicable to pennies and halfpennies in the old £ s d coinage. The 5p and 10p cupro-nickel coins also had a weight/value relationship to each other. I think that, although the 50p did not have such a weight/value relationship to the round 5p and 10p that its heptagon shape was significant because by the time the 20p was introduced many years after this book was published it likely also had a weight/value relationship to it's heptagonal partner the 50p.
Practically. What this meant was that mixed lots of like coinage regardless of value could now be simply weighed instead of individually counted out. A big step towards automation without the need for dedicated or sophisticated counting machinery. You could count up bags of money at home on a set of good quality kitchen scales!

There are lots of other historical anecdotes on the history of British current going back to King Ine (688-726) who first coined the word 'penny'.
I also didn't know that not France, but in fact the United States was the first modern country to decimalise its currency in 1792, a year before France, and 72 years before the next group of nations Belgium, Italy and Switzerland changed over in 1865. By the end of the nineteenth century most European countries had adopted decimal systems; with another round of changes following World War II. The United Kingdom with all it's traditions and unique ways, lagging behind as usual and almost making it till the 21st century before finally conceding to pressure from the rest of the economic world.

It is as much a fascinating history book as it it a guide to the big D-day change over. But, if you were ever curious about the relationship between £, s, and d, this book explains clearly that too.
There is also information on how inches will be replaced by centimetres and miles to kilometres - LOL!
I guess England hasn't finished going through D-day quite yet; nor for that matter has the progressively advanced United States. Poor shame America - you were so close to showing the other nations up too!… (més)