236 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1856. We should need one abacus for pounds, shillings, and pence, 

 another for avoirdupois weight, a third for troy weight, and so 

 on. In China, however, where the whole system is decimal 

 that is where every measure, weight, &c., is the tenth part of the 

 next greater one this instrument, called in Chinese schwanpan, 

 is very much used and with astonishing rapidity. It is said 

 that while one man reads over rapidly a number of sums of 

 money, another can add them so as to give the total as soon as 

 the first has done reading. 



First Com- General Pasley tried to bring forward the question in 



mission on J 



weights 1834 in a volume On Coinage, Weights, and Measures, and 

 sures. on the Advantages of a Decimal System. Four years after, 



Mr. Spring Rice, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 

 obtained the appointment of a Royal Commission on 

 weights and measures. In the Companion to the Almanac 

 for the year 1841, Mr. De Morgan showed the advantages 

 that would arise from the adoption of a decimal coinage. 1 

 He insisted on the introduction of an entirely decimal 

 system of accounts, in combination with such change in 

 the coinage as should be best adapted to, and be the 

 means of introducing such a system of accounts. He 

 showed how easily our present system might be changed 

 to a decimal one by retaining the pound sterling, and 

 dividing it into 1,000 parts ; and recommended the reten- 

 tion of as many of our coins as bore a relation to the 

 pound, and the very small alteration in the value of six- 

 pences and shillings needed to bring them into the new 

 system. The plan of the proposed change is explained, 

 and names of coins suggested. He strongly advised that 

 the change be made first in the coinage, believing that 

 the complications which would arise from carrying it into 

 weights and measures would throw everything into con- 

 fusion. He saw that the minds of the mercantile and 

 working classes must be made familiar with the decimal 



1 ' On the Use of Small Tables of Logarithms in Commercial Calcu- 

 lations, and on the Practicability of a Decimal Coinage.' Companion to 

 the Almanac, 1841. 



