This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
This is from the 20th printing of the original British paperback edition (the one with the weird stripey cover). On the one hand, British currency is not predominantly green; on the other hand, he is talking about an entire planet whose economy is dominated by a nation that uses currency that is mostly green.
Really? I’m surprised. Canada discontinued the penny several years ago, and Russia dropped the kopek around the same time. I assumed this was now a thing, and thought the US (along with other countries) had followed suit.
Has the American government given any rationale as to why they’re hanging on to the penny? I haven’t been to the US since January 2000, but I still have a bunch of pennies I never spent.
The word “dollar” originated as an alternative spelling for the different silver coins called “thaler”. ACD is simply using it to refer to money in general.
You mean… like how the US has got board an adopted the metric system like everyone else? Oh, wait…
Americans are stubborn…
Inertia and public outcry every time they try to make a change in the currency. A certain segment of the population will scream they’re being “cheated” if prices start being rounded off
Good news - they’re still legal currency. Unlike the small bowl of Canadian pennies we have where I work, along with a few paper Canadian dollars.
Britain still uses inches, and did so almost exclusively in the 1960s and 1970s. Fahrenheit would also have been the default in that era - it’s only in the 1980s or even 1990s that Celsius took over in daily discourse, and even nowadays many people still use Fahrenheit, at least when talking about warm summer temperatures (if there’s a heatwave on the way, the newspapers will always trumpet the fact that it could reach 85F or 90F).
Regarding “dollars”, in Victorian times that word used to be slang for a crown (five shillings, or a quarter of a pound sterling), reflecting the fact that the exchange rate used to be four dollars to the pound. (It’s now about $1.30 ). In Cockney rhyming slang, a crown was referred to as an “Oxford” (Oxford scholar = dollar).
[QUOTE=Colophon;21460204(if there’s a heatwave on the way, the newspapers will always trumpet the fact that it could reach 85F or 90F).[/QUOTE]
Odd definition of heat-wave - the American midwest considers that a nice summer day, and we might need to put on a jacket. And yes, I know ‘normal’ temperature varies - probably people in Seattle would agree with you.
Bear in mind that even London, in the south of England, is further north than three-quarters of the population of Canada. Actually probably more like 90% of the population.
Speaking of Harry Potter, I remember in the beginning of the Order of the Phoenix movie a radio announcer giving the expected temperature in Fahrenheit during a heat wave. I was wondering if the movie had been Americanized but maybe it was reflecting reality.
For reference, the names of American coins, as stamped on them, are “One Cent”, “Five Cents”, “One Dime”, “Quarter Dollar”, “Half Dollar”, and “One Dollar” (sometimes “$1”).
In the days of the Gold Standard, a US dollar was consistently worth about 5 shillings. Although the crown (5s) coin went out of regular circulation long ago, the half-crown stayed in use and was the highest value coin in circulation until decimalisation in 1971. My father and his generation still referred to “half a dollar”, even then.
My John Murray Jonathan Cape edition of the short stories uses ‘dollars’. The American Doubleday edition (since reprinted under other imprints) normally follows the ‘Strand’ magazine text.
Just checked my UK copy- it gives the temperature in Celsius, then Fahrenheit.
That would not be all that odd here; Celsius is definitely the default for weather forecasts, ‘temperatures around 15°’ with no scale, would be Celsius, and you wouldn’t ever get it just in Fahrenheit, but they may well say both. Especially for an unusually high temperature, more dramatic sounding numbers and all that.
In my mid 30s, I have only the vaguest idea of Fahrenheit, I only ever seem to see it on trashy tabloids, accompanied by something like ‘HOTTER THAN CORFU!’ often with comedically low temperatures, like this.
Cold weather is in Celsius, 'cos they can stick a - in front of it and sound scary.
We have a very strange relationship with metric/imperial measures here too; if you asked someone to measure a strange object, you’d almost certainly get a measurement in cm from anyone under the age of around 40. But… many things are still called by their size in inches, road signs are miles and yards, and if you asked even a teenager how tall they were, you’d have a good chance of getting a height in feet and inches. Fuel is sold by the litre, beer is sold by the pint in a pub, 500ml in the supermarket, milk can be anything. Almost nothing is sold by the lb.
I was in England the summer of 1995. The temperature hit 87 and the newspapers were screaming that it was the hottest day since Queen Victoria lost her virginity or something like that.
Remember, England doesn’t have air conditioning. Or ice.
I’ve been American just about my whole life, and my understanding has always been that “one cent” and “five cents” are the values of coins that are named “penny” and “nickel.” They just don’t have the name printed on them — in their current forms, anyway; I don’t know about earlier designs.
I just went over this with my college-age students. The sample Java program we were working on (to give change) gave the results as “quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies”) which led to the side discussion on what’s actually on the coins. They thought the five cent coin said nickel, and the one cent coin said penny. I showed them a picture of an (old seated Britannia) UK penny- now that’s a penny! They also didn’t know that the dime said “one dime” and had no idea where the word dime came from, which we then explored. I remember from my college days that these off-topic discussions were often the most interesting part of the day, at least better than another Java program.
Back to the OP, there was a 1804 Bank of England Dollar, also engraved as five shillings (or a crown). To relieve a shortage of silver coins, it was overstruck on a Spanish colonial coin, which was also the monetary basis of the US dollar.
). In Cockney rhyming slang, a crown was referred to as an “Oxford” (Oxford scholar = dollar).