Tony Erikson   10 #13 Posted December 3, 2011 The number of zeros make a difference, of course, but if we'd kept our original billion the rest of the world would've had to check their figures ie. count the zeros not just read the word. I can't see what the problem is  Because the rest of the world used the better more logical system. To not simply change would have left us with major headaches. How can a computer determine when it should print an American or British billion? Maybe we should have stuck with the old currency too and made the rest of the world check their numbers?  It's much easier to just make a billion a billion regardless of where you live. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Share this content via...
mickw   10 #14 Posted December 3, 2011 (edited) Because the rest of the world used the better more logical system. To not simply change would have left us with major headaches. How can a computer determine when it should print an American or British billion? Maybe we should have stuck with the old currency too and made the rest of the world check their numbers?  It's much easier to just make a billion a billion regardless of where you live.  Why is the rest of the worlds less by three zeros more logical than ours? Who came up with a billion in the first place? Why do you keep calling it a system? Computers can determine anything they are programmed to determine. Staying with the old currency system would have been a mistake as metric is easier to number crunch.  Look up long scale and short scale. You will see from this that it's not just a case of Americans using a better number it's all relative to mathematics and which one is being subscribed to. Edited December 3, 2011 by mickw Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Share this content via...
Swan_Vesta   11 #15 Posted December 3, 2011 It's gone the same way as the 1/2p ........ In to financial obscurity Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Share this content via...
HeadingNorth   11 #16 Posted December 3, 2011 I don't quite see how the American system is a better, more logical one than the British system ... but it is, without question, quite silly to have two different systems in different parts of the world. The sensible thing was for one of those two systems to be abandoned, and the logical choice for which system to throw away is the one that is less used.  Which was ours; so our system has been replaced. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Share this content via...
