Sterlicon "5" - The Ultimate British Decimal Currency Converter

[@Gannett2011]

Very interesting. I was born a year after decimalisation but am fascinated by it: it must have been a huge change for people's daily lives. I used to work in a further education college, and one of my jobs was clearing out a basement. There were course catalogues going back to the 50s. This particular college had a whole load of evening classes in decimal currency in the late 60s, presumably for shop assistants.

[@GrumpyTim]

I never used the old pounds shillings and pence so it remained a mysterious old system, until I got one of my first mechanical calculators, which had pounds, shillings, pence and farthings, so I not only had to learn how the machine worked, but also how the old currency system worked. I can't begin to imagine how much hassle it was changing to decimal - never knew there were evening classes in decimal currency, but it makes sense. Cheers for watching John

[@radiogagag9352]

Love the Mrs Smith outro....😊. The transition from Deutsche Mark to the Euro was not very problematic for the Germans because the ratio was nearly 2 DM to 1€ so the new prices were easy to check but for the French it was much more difficult. If I remember correctly it was 7:1. But everywhere the transition was used to elevate the prices. Some restaurants in Germany changed only the currency symbol but forgot to devide the numbers by two. It is always the same game.....

[@GrumpyTim]

There must be a bit of turmoil whenever a country changes currency, or even when coins or notes are phased out, people are always left with piles of relatively worthless money, particularly when it's smaller value coins. I'd forgotten about the countries that changed to the Euro, they'll all have seen some relatively recent confusion. It could be quite an interesting subject, looking at how different countries currencies have changed over the years.

[@masudashizue777]

Fascinating! I wonder why they put the wheels on the left side when more people are right-handed?

[@GrumpyTim]

Hi Masuda, although it does seem weird that they chose the left hand side for the wheels, when you actually use the thing you have to hold one wheel still while you rotate the second, and unless you've got amazing dexterity you have to use both hands, which means one arm will be obscuring the display unless you keep that arm up in the air (or flat down on the desk). I think one wheel on each end might have been the best option, but none of this matters really, the fact that the thing even exists is the most amazing part - it's massively over engineered for the job it does, a simple chart would have done the trick. All that said, I'm really glad they did make it, because it's one of the coolest number relayed gadgets that I have.

[@hebneh]

I hope there’s more than one of these devices in equally good condition in a variety of British museums.

[@GrumpyTim]

Hi hebneh, I seem to recall tracking down one that was in a museum somewhere, I think it was in Ireland and hopefully there will be a few more just sitting as part of a collection in various museums. I saw one sitting on a desk in an episode of The Professionals which is sort of odd seeing as though The Professionals were late 70s and early 80s, but I guess these things hung around on desks for a fair few years after D Day.

[@kyleeames8229]

Their own stuff in a British museum?? Ridiculous!! I kid. There likely is. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were replicas around too. History buffs really dig this sort of thing, and aren’t really snobby about it being an original because they really just want the conversation piece/curiosity.

[@funksterdotorg]

That is a very satisfyingly chonky-looking device.

[@GrumpyTim]

Yep, massively over engineered, and all the better for it!!!

[@scottcollins7513]

Your production quality is excellent. The little touches like the faux-vintage newspaper heading are great. I wish more people got to appreciate your work. And, thanks for the education on the old and odd currencies of England along w/ a cool little device. Unfortunately, here in the US, we are still plagued by many inane units of measure b/c we have not had the will to switch to the metric system. I could blame England, but that is not fair considering they were smart enough to move away from most of the units that still haunt us. At some point, you have to take ownership and stop blaming your "parent".

[@GrumpyTim]

Cheers Scott, I've definitely spent my life thinking the decimal system was better, partly because that was what I'd always used, and partly because it just seemed better and more logical. But someone directed me to a video by LindyBeige where he pointed out that, when the pound had quite a bit of buying power and many items would cost pennies not pounds, dividing the pound into 240 pennies actually made a lot of sense, for instance, you could divide a pound into 3 equal portions, something you can't do when there are 100 pennies to the pound. It's quite a long video (about an hour), but if you're interested, here's a link kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGPTkoZ9hreqrNE

[@scottcollins7513]

@@GrumpyTim I will check out the video -- thank you. And, yes, I have heard that argument when talking about base 60 used by the Babylonians and the idea of having 360 degrees in a circle. 60 has so many factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60. 100 has fewer factors: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100. In a time before calculators, it made good sense. Now-a-days, the decimal system rules. Take care, and thanks again for the interesting and well-made content.

[@jaapsch2]

Great video Tim! I didn't know such sturdy decimal currency converters existed. I have a little plastic one called the Decimeter, but that is not in the same league as this beauty.

[@GrumpyTim]

Cheers Jaap, I spotted it at a flea market and knew immediately that it was coming home with me. I'm still kind of amazed that it exists, after all, things like your Decimeter would generally do the trick, but I'm really glad someone did go to the effort of engineering the Sterlicon, because it's a bit of a gem.

[@jaapsch2]

@@GrumpyTim I like the clever window trick in that second decimal place. I just remembered I also have a metal disk one that does conversion to 6 decimals. This was made in the late 1940s though, so not for the changeover but just for general use in financial calculations. It's by Sumlock (or rather London Computator Ltd.). It's in an early video of mine titled "Calculator tables and disk-shaped currency table".

[@GrumpyTim]

I just watched that video Jaap - what an amazing thing that Sumlock disk is - gives you an instant result so you can carry on with your calculations.

[@markylon]

Interestingly you never mentioned that the first and second windows after the decimal point were wider and had a number inside another window. Would love to see the mechanism on why that was necessary

[@GrumpyTim]

It's just the way they engineered the barrels with the numbers - the first two windows are the full pence windows - the first window has 2 of each number printed on the outer barrel - on the first occurrence of a number it appears on the left hand side and in the second column there is an opening in the outer barrel (also on the left hand side) showing the numbers on the inner barrel beneath. The numbers appearing in that opening are 5 zeros, 5 ones, 5 twos, 5 threes, and 4 fours. After that you rotate the outer barrel to display the second occurrence of a number, this time appearing on the right hand side, with the opening in the second column also being on the right hand side. This time round you'll have 5 fives, 5 sixes, 5 sevens, 5 eights and 4 nines. The decimals of each penny run from 3 zeros, then .208 ending up on .792. I think that more or less covers it.....

[@markylon]

In reality shops never did a direct conversion as it was a great excuse to do a massive price increase, a bit like when countries switched to the Euro, items did NOT make a direct conversion but used as an excuse to UP THE PRICE by quite some margin.

[@GrumpyTim]

Yeah, that's very much what I'd heard from people a few years after the event - I used to think they were just old people grumbling, but if they did a similar thing now I'd be the one grumbling!

[@markylon]

@@GrumpyTim Their excuse was they had to increase the prices due to the increased costs in switching, eg re-pricing, new cash registers, new signage etc etc. All the costs involved in the switch over were passed to the customer in the conversion PLUS a little more ;)

[@paulnicholson1906]

Massive wouldn't be possible as the rounding was a fraction of a penny. I think the perception was there though because it was a period of high inflation anyway. I remember then pretty well and it certainly was weird ditching the old money. I remember having to do the old money math problems at school and of course going to the shops although I wasn't doing high finance then..... The new pee seemed weird as was eliminating the half crown, threepenny bit and the big pennies. A pocketful of the big pennies would pull your trousers down just about. i remember my grandmother explaining the sixpence was now 2 1/2 new p. She used to give me that so I could buy some Rolos or two Crunchies. The small ones were 3d.

[@markylon]

@@paulnicholson1906 shops took advantage of people's ignorance and used the opportunity to increase prices it wasn't as easy as it 'used to be 6d' and is now a direct conversion, prices increased as shopkeepers used the opportunity to use the conversion to pay for their costs of new signage, new equipment, till conversions and repricing all the stock. Exactly the same when the Euro came to European countries eg Ireland prices massively increased nothing was today £1 and tomorrow 85¢ prices went up massively.

[@dieseldragon6756]

@@paulnicholson1906 I wasn't alive back in those days, but I wonder how many shopkeepers tried just erasing the comma/slash from the price - i.e. 2/6 becomes 26p - To _really_ bump up the price? 💸 Though with 26p being about 5/2.5 that would've been more than a 100% markup. Doable, but damned hard to hide I would _hope_ ... 😳

[@markylon]

Seeing this video I thought it would be fun to use excel to do the conversion: =(A1*240 + B1*12 + C1)/240 using cell A1 for £, B1 for S, and C1 for 1p = put the formula in D1 for the output

[@GrumpyTim]

Cheers Mark, I'll give that a whirl when I get the chance.

[@JamilaJibril-e8h]

​@@GrumpyTim😂😂😂 good job 👏👏👏

[@ohjajohh]

Very interesting, I never knew there were 240 pennies in a pound

[@GrumpyTim]

It was very much a mysterious old money system to me for a long time, having only used the decimal currency myself, but once I looked into the old system it was pretty interesting. When the pound was worth a reasonable amount of money it made sense dividing it up into more pennies, because a few pennies would buy you quite a lot. Cheers for watching.

[@dieseldragon6756]

If you look close enough you'll find 16oz in every Pound, too... 💷⚖😋

[@JamilaJibril-e8h]

😂😂😂😂

[@Numischannel]

So if you bought the Sterlicon 5 currency converter at £6/19/6, you already lost all those minimal fractions of a new penny you were supposed to spare 🤣🤣🤣🤣 No wonder why so few were made.... However, as a collector or British pre-decimals since age 9, I'd love to add one of these artifacts to my collection! Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[@GrumpyTim]

Hi Numischannel, yes, I definitely think they invented a thing that never needed to be invented when they designed the Sterlicon, but I'm really glad they did because it's such an interesting device from a very specific time in British history.

[@Numischannel]

@@GrumpyTim Indeed it is!

[@BensWorkshop]

That is quite an interesting machine. I wonder how many people know or understand the superior utility of 240 (or indeed 360). Apparently the original half penny and farthing were made by cutting the original silver pennies along the cross on one side.

[@GrumpyTim]

It's a cool little gadget, massively over engineered for the job and duration that it was likely to be used for, but I really like it because of all that. I must admit that I'm a 100s man - that's what I grew up with so I guess I've never experienced the old system in anger. Strangely, much of the information I read says that the transition from £/s/d to decimal went smoothly, but I've definitely heard people in the past telling me what a disgrace it was and that shops used it as an excuse to add stealth price increases. It got me thinking though, with the way things are going, how long before they drop the 1p and 2p and have 5p as the smallest amount - scary thought!!! I didn't know that about the original half penny and farthing, but it makes sense. Cheers for watching Ben

[@BensWorkshop]

@@GrumpyTim Always interesting Tim o a pleasure to watch. As for being a 100s man, well, so was I. Then I watched a LindiBeige video. and in passing he mentioned the logic of the old system. Try writing the factors of each. 240 is a much more useful number, particularly if a pound is worth something.

[@GrumpyTim]

Oooh I might look that one up - always nice to have my mind changed on something like that. Cheers Ben.

[@BensWorkshop]

@@GrumpyTim You just have to work out the factors of each.

[@GrumpyTim]

I watched that LindyBeige video about British coinage and very good it was too, and who'd have thought it, 240 does divide up better, sadly only really of use when the pound was a significant amount.

[@marsoff9898]

How the hell back in 1971 could they round that decimal result to the nearest ha’penny?

[@GrumpyTim]

I get the feeling they were pretty used to doing sums in their heads having worked with the old currency for so long, so maybe rounding that result wasn't too much of a problem - or maybe they then had to create a rounding up/down chart so they always followed the same protocol every time.

[@cmyk8964]

Well, 1s == 12d == 5p, so it would just be a matter of pre-rounding each penny value like this. 0d = 0.000p = 0p 1d = 0.417p ≈ ½p 2d = 0.833p ≈ 1p 3d = 1.250p ≈ 1p or 1½p 4d = 1.667p ≈ 1½p 5d = 2.083p ≈ 2p 6d = 2.500p = 2½p 7d = 2.917p ≈ 3p 8d = 3.333p ≈ 3½p 9d = 3.750p ≈ 3½p or 4p 10d = 4.167p ≈ 4p 11d = 4.583p ≈ 4½p 12d = 5.000p = 5p

[@annoldham3018]

They had it on a beer mat? How 70s! 😂

[@GrumpyTim]

It's kind of brilliant isn't it Ann - I just had to buy that beer mat when I saw it!!!

[@godfreypoon5148]

ahh yes, shlttings and pants

[@dieseldragon6756]

Dollars and Sense. 😋

[@JamilaJibril-e8h]

I wonder where people see this in daily life 😂😂😂 🤔🤔

[@dieseldragon6756]

What an awesome piece of kit this is...Many thanks for showing it to us! 🪙🇬🇧😁 I'd just like to point out 07:45 though; Yes, a cheap electronic calculator or smartphone app is a much cheaper way of doing it...But where might I have found a *cheap* electronic calculator¹ or anything capable of running a smartphone app in 1968? 😋 (¹ - Electronic calculators were available at the time, but they were damned big and heavy things that were plugged in to the mains, used valves, and definitely would _not_ have been cheap! The first transistorised pocket calculators were the iPhones of their time, and were sold at prices roughly equivalent to that if not more. 💸)

[@GrumpyTim]

Cheers Dieseldragon6756, glad you liked it. When I was talking about the relative price of the Sterlicon I was just meaning that the £77.25 current price is good for a nicely built thing like the Sterlicon but it doesn't compare well to a current cheap calculator or phone app, I wasn't intending to say you could get those in 1970 when The Sterlicon was around. I do have quite a collection of old calculators and adding machines, both mechanical and early electronic, and they're lovely things. By 1970 valves were a thing of the past as far as calculators were concerned, with chips already taking over from the earlier discreet transistor based units. I'll drop a link below to one of my rather nice 1970s electronic machines if you fancied a look. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZmHZcp6bl5iWmJI