Patito de Hule

Why lunacy? With the dollar, they had pieces of eight. That is, eight reales or rials was a dollar. The 240 pence in a pound was evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 24, 30, 40, 60, and 120. The dollar was divisible by 1, 2, and 4. Only. I admit, I saw little use in the guinea.

Maybe a pain in your patootie. When I was working in Nigeria, it took me less than half an hour to get going full speed on a pound/shilling/pence calculator. They didn't do guineas which were 1/1/00.

Of course, if you're counting on your fingers, it could be a problem.

sculptingman

The term "Pieces of eight" is a throwback to the Spanish Doubloon, which was a common coin in early colonial times- an artifact of privateering British raiders and Caribbean pirates who often traded along the Atlantic coast.

A doubloon could be literally broken into 8 parts, or "bits"- 2 bits making a quarter doubloon.
But there was no equivalency in Doubloons to dollars as far as valuation.

The term two bits came to mean one quarter dollar, just as it already meant one quarter doubloon. But the US dollar never had an eighth part coin.
This is why you hear in American English usage 2 bits, 4 bits, or even 6 bits... but you never hear 1 bit, 3 bits, 5 etc.

The founding fathers lacked such calculators.

There is an inherent stupidity in calculating values in mixed bases. Using base 10 notation to calculate fractional values in bases 8 or otherwise.

There may be an argument that a base 12 numeric system would be inherently easier due to the more ways in which base 12 evenly divides without fractions... but we only have 10 symbols and ten fingers, so its no surprise we didn't adopt a base 12 system.

Given that arabic notation actually IS base 10, The founders decided that the simplest currency was unitary base 10- with the dollar divided into halves, quarters, tenths, twentieths, and hundredths.

The same logic underlies the metric system...
although the imperial system of weights and measures has some relevance in regards to comprehension... An inch is as wide as a man's thumb ( the 'rule of thumb' ) A foot about as long as his foot, a yard half his span, a cup about as much as he can hold in his cupped hand... etc...
But It still made calculation and commerce far more complicated that it needed to be.

Patito de Hule

I'm not wrong, just incomplete. The term "piece of eight" was actually ambiguous, meaning either:
1) A coin that was eight of something. Eight reales.
2) An eighth of something, in this case one eighth of a dollar.

The dollar was eight reales. The escudo was 16 reales, and the doubloon (doblón) was two escudos or 32 reals.


This is a Spanish Dollar. The '8' on the right hand side is for 8 reales or 8 reals (or 8 rials). The "M" with the tiny "o" above it is the mint mark, Mexico in this case. At the time of the American Revolution, or from about 1760 to 1800, the style common in America had Charles IV on one side and the same shield with the Pillars of Hercules. It was commonly called the "Pillar Dollar." Those minted in Bolivia instead of the Mo had PTSI (Potosi) mint mark with the letters superimposed on top of one another. I couldn't find a clear picture of the 1789 style pillar dollars from Potosi to see what could look like a $ sign with 3 vertical bars. It is believed that is the source of the $.

The very fact that the people of that time lacked such calculators is the logic of having a coin or other measure that was evenly divisible by 2 and by 2 again and by 2 again (in the case of the 8 reales or dollar). In the case of the pound, that division by 2 and 2 and 2 left 30 pence, which is also divisible by 2, 3, and 5. It was very convenient. We went to a decimal system (based on the decimal numbering system that we inherited from the Arabs) was more mundane. Jefferson and others who argued for it were Francophiles and Anglophobes. The English system is not lunacy at all.

We kept the English system of weights and measures. A pound Avoirdupois is 16 oz. with 16 divisible by 2 X 2 X 2 X 2. A pound
Troy is 12 oz., so a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. The foot is 12 inches.

The mile was actually milia passuum, a thousand paces. A pace was 2 gradus or steps. But land measures were complicated, perhaps you would say "lunacy." The acre is measured by frontage. When a plot is a quarter mile deep, each eleven yards of frontage is an acre. Or in plots a mile deep, each 110 yards is 40 acres. Eleven isn't so coveniently divisible by any integer (it's a prime number), but 16 X 11 = 1760. 1,760 yards is a mile, and the measure developed once again by dividing 1760 in half and half and half and half again. Variations in acres go right along with variations in the mile. A degree of latitude is just slightly over 60 miles. Hence the nautical mile, one minute of latitude. Slightly less than a mile. Knots and mph have a similar relationship. These are not exact, but arbitrarily standardized by estimates.