January 20, 19 16] 



NATURE 



569 



The editor of the journal in question circulated 

 inong- business firms about 450 copies of a letter, 

 1 which more than 120 replies were received. 



he following questions were asked of the re- 

 ipients of the letter: — 



I. Do you employ the metric system in your corre- 

 pondence with foreign clients? 

 1. Are your products 



(a) described in your catalogues in terms of 

 metric weights and measures? 



(b) priced in terms of foreign coinage? 



3. Do you employ the metric system in your work- 

 hops? 



4. Are you in favour of the adoption in this country 



(a) of decimal coinage? 



(&) of metric weights and measures ? 



5. May we quote your name in referring to your 

 [)lies in the Electrical Review? 



The result has been a very thorough discussion 



1 the advantages of the metric system, and the 



)sence of any substantial evidence regarding the 



iDnetary question. Many firms are actually using 



metric units; in electrical, physical, and chemical 



uork they have become universally recognised, 



and in cases where they are not exclusively 



adopted they are at least used in foreign trade. 



On the other hand, few firms are able to give 



quotations in foreign currency, owing to the 



\arieties of foreign coinage and the fluctuations 



')f the rate of exchange. Where manufacturers 



have expressed themselves favourably to decimal 



coinage their replies strike us as not being based 



on any substantial grounds. 



In examining this aspect of the subject the 

 questions which naturally arise are : — (i) What is 

 meant by decimal coinage? (2) What countries 

 have adopted it? (3) What is the system it is 

 proposed to adopt here? 



Now the decimal system of weights and 

 measures which is in international use is based 

 on a distinctive and unique nomenclature for tens, 

 hundreds, thousands, and the corresponding sub- 

 multiples of the fundamental unit, whether it be 

 a unit of length, capacity, or weight. By a 

 process of natural selection those multiples and 

 submultiples have been retained which have been 

 found most useful; for example, millimetres, 

 centimetres, metres, and kilometres, to the ex- 

 clusion of other derived units. But no country in 

 the world has adopted a decimal coinage based 

 on this nomenclature. Instead of this we have 

 a perfect chaos of centesimal systems, each based 

 on the subdivision of a fundamental unit into a 

 hundred "cents." In most cases, sums of money 

 amounting to millions of pounds are expressed 

 in terms of a unit no larger than a shilling, while 

 sums less than a shilling are expressed in tenths 

 of a penny, although coins of less than five-tenths 

 are rarely used. In some cases y^*^ of the larger 

 unit is commonly used in preference to the j^^^. 



The plea for a decimal coinage must therefore 

 either be an advocacy, not of a decimal system, 

 but of a centesimal system similar to one actually 

 in use, or it must represent a demand for some- 

 thing new and different. 



Now the disadvantages of uniformity will be 

 NO. 2412, VOL. 96] 



evident to anyone who travels in one of the 

 countries of the so-called Latin Union, such as 

 France, Switzerland, Italy. It is often quite im- 

 possible to obtain change for a sovereign in the 

 current coin of the realm. Instead the traveller 

 receives a collection of coins of a number of 

 different countries, some of them good, others 

 bad. The only countries in which bad money 

 can never circulate are those, such as Germany 

 and Austria, which have distinct monetary units. 

 If England were to adopt the franc and centime, 

 England would soon be flooded with foreign 

 money. The difficulty of deciding, by means of 

 diagrams, whether a particular coin is good or 

 bad is at least equal to the diflSculty of reducing 

 shillings to pence, and most inhabitants of the 

 countries in question have accumulations of bad 

 money that they are only too glad to pass off on 

 an uninitiated Englishman. 



If, however, the system is to be different from 

 those of other countries, it is difficult to see how 

 it can facilitate foreign commerce. The exchange 

 value of an English sovereign is well known all 

 over the world, and quotations in pounds are fully 

 understood. The only difficulty may arise among 

 foreign clients with the twelve pence in the 

 shilling. But in foreign trade pence practically 

 never enter into the calculations, and all that the 

 manufacturers need do is to give their quotations 

 in decimals of a pound, which they can easily do. 



It is in the last of the series of articles that the 

 contributor of the Electrical Review gives him- 

 self away. After obtaining overwhelming evi- 

 dence of the advantages of the metric system, he 

 proposes that the coinage should be changed first, 

 and that the remaining changes should follow 

 within a time-limit of one twelvemonth. It 

 would appear that the proposed coinage should 

 leave the pound and the shilling intact, and should 

 depreciate the value of the penny by about 4 per 

 cent. 



We need not have any serious apprehensions 

 that Parliament would ever consent to a proposal 

 which would rob the working-man of a fraction 

 of the value of his penny while leaving the income- 

 tax payer unmulcted. It is, however, fairly evi- 

 dent that if such a scheme were adopted penny 

 articles would not be sold for less than a penny 

 farthing, and we should thus approximate to the 

 system of marks and pferuiige of Germany. 



The writer of the present article happened to 

 be travelling in Austria a little while after the 

 change from gulden and kreuzer to kronen and 

 heller, and although this alteration involved 

 nothing more than doubling the figures, the con- 

 fusion was very great and the change took a 

 long time to effect. 



It is quite clear that any attempt of this kind 

 introduced during the present universal up- 

 heaval would lead to a state of chaos in our inter- 

 national trade which would induce our foreign 

 clients to transfer their business to Germany, or 

 to some neutral country with the coinage of which 

 they had become familiar. 



In conclusion, whether the attempt to introduce 



