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Pre decimal currencies

£sd (occasionally written Lsd), spoken as "pounds, shillings and pence", is the popular name for the pre decimal currencies once common throughout Europe. The abbreviation originates from the Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii. In the United Kingdom, these were referred to as pounds, shillings, and pence (pence being the plural of penny). Under this system, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. Although the standard ledger accounting system recorded only pounds, shillings and pence, actual minted coins could represent one, several or fractions of these units. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings until 31 December 1960, when they ceased to be legal tender in the UK, and until 31 July 1969 there was also a halfpenny ("HAYp'ny", /ˈheɪpni/) in circulation. The perceived advantage of such a system was its use in some aspects of mental arithmetic, as it afforded many factors and hence fractions of a pound such as tenths, eighths, sixths and even sevenths and ninths if the guinea (worth 21 shillings) was used. When dealing with items in dozens, multiplication and division are straightforward; for example, if a dozen eggs cost four shillings, then each egg was priced at fourpence. Basic addition, however, could be more difficult than using a decimal system. Although the names originated from popular coins in the classical Roman Empire, their definitions and the ratios between them were introduced and imposed across Western Europe by the Emperor Charlemagne. King Offa of Mercia adopted the Frankish silver standard of librae, solidi and denarii into Britain in the late 8th century. The £sd system was the standard across much of the European continent for over a thousand years, until the decimalisations of the 18th and 19th centuries. The United Kingdom remained one of the few countries retaining it into the 20th century, resulting in the system becoming particularly associated with Britain. For much of the 20th century, £sd remained the monetary system of most of the British Commonwealth, the major exceptions being Canada and India, until the 1960s and 1970s, with Nigeria being the last to abandon it in the form of the Nigerian pound on 1 January 1973. Historically, similar systems based on Roman coinage were used elsewhere; e. g., the division of the livre tournois in France and other pre decimal currencies such as Spain, which had 20 maravedís to 1 real and 20 reals to 1 duro or 5 pesetas.

The classical Roman Empire originally used a decimal currency system based on the "as" whereby 1 denarius = 10 as. The silver denarius was the common circulation coin, but accounting was in sestercii. Later Roman Emperors undertook multiple coinage reforms, redefining weights and coins' relative values and introducing new coins and new accounting systems for them. Since most reforms were not even completed before the next one began, the late Roman Empire had a veritable mess of multiple overlapping systems of weights and currencies. Around the 780s, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne cut through the mess by creating a new uniform system. He defined the "libra" as a new measure of weight equivalent to around 489.6 grams (substantially larger than the old Roman pound of 328.9g), and ordered 240 silver units known as denarii to be struck from the new Carolingian pound of pure silver, each denarius containing 22.5 grains of silver. To help accounting, Charlemagne also decreed that the pound was divisible into 20 solidii each of 12 denarii. Thus began the Carolingian monetary system (1l. = 20s. = 240d.). The new coinage and accounting system was imposed uniformly across the vast Carolingian Empire and also infiltrated countries on its periphery. In the late 8th century, King Offa of Mercia imported the system into Britain to facilitate transactions (notably "Peter's pence") with the Roman Catholic Church (which used the Carolingian coinage system). But it was not the sole system in Britain – the £sd system would have to compete for a while with the Viking "mark" accounting system, introduced into Danelaw regions. Although £sd ultimately prevailed in Britain, the "mark of account" system lingered on in North Sea trade and areas of Hanseatic influence through much of the Middle Ages. Charlemagne's new monetary system prevailed across much of Western Europe including France (where the units were known as the livre, sous and denier), Italy (lira, soldo and denaro), the Holy Roman Empire (pfund, schilling and pfennig) and in England (pound, shilling and penny). The English name pound is a Germanic adaptation of the Latin phrase libra pondo 'a pound weight'. On the Iberian peninsula, the Kingdom of Aragon adopted the Carolingian monetary system (Catalan: lliura, sou and diners), but those of Portugal and Castile (and subsequently Spain) retained the currency system inherited from al Andalus. During the early Middle Ages, only the denarius was issued as an actual coin; the libra and solidus were merely units of account. But over time, the silver resources were gradually exhausted and the coins became repeatedly debased by mediaeval monarchs, prompting the minting of larger coins from the 13th century. It also led to specification of currencies by mint of origin in contracts and accounting (e. g. a denier parisis, of the Paris mint, contained more actual silver than the very debased denier tournois of the Tours mint). To facilitate larger transactions, gold coins began to be minted in western Europe around the same time. The French "franc", introduced in 1360, was the first coin anywhere to represent exactly £1 and the gold "sovereign", first minted in 1489, was the first English £1 coin. Although the £sd system remained intact in ledger accounting, the variety of new coins of various multiples and qualities led to common expression of quantities in terms of number of coins (guineas, crowns, farthings, etc.) But they would all have to be converted into formal £sd units in accounts.

In the UK, larger denomination notes (£5, £10, £20, £50, £100, £200, £500, and £1,000) printed from the 18th century to 1943 were called "white notes" because they were printed on lightweight white paper (on one side only) in black ink. United Kingdom pre decimal banknotes are no longer legal tender, but are exchangeable for their face value (regardless of the possible greater worth if sold or auctioned) if they are taken directly (or posted) to the Bank of England. The last £sd coins to cease being legal tender in the UK after Decimal Day were the sixpence (withdrawn 1980), the shilling (withdrawn 1991) and the florin (withdrawn 1993). Commemorative crowns minted post decimalisation (worth either 25p or £5) are still legal tender, but are rarely, if ever, spent. The last £sd banknote to cease to be legal tender anywhere was the Isle of Man ten shilling note, which ceased to be legal tender there in 2013.

Computers and calculators sold pre decimalisation – mostly in the 1960s – occasionally came with special support for the £sd system in the form of a fixed point currency datatype. The IBM 1401 is one such machine; on Sterling models with £sd support, it had a switch for selecting between IBM and BSI data layouts of £sd on its auxiliary console (see image). The ICT 1301 and the PL/I language also had £sd support.