Nitpick: 1971. And not just “between 1970 and 1980”, but to this day, 100 new pence make a pound. (The coins haven’t said “new pence” since 1981, though, just “pence”.)
Note that we have a quarter BECAUSE it’s “two bits”. In the 18th century, the defacto standard coinage in the New World (and many other places) was the Spanish dollar, which was worth 8 reales. The newly created US dollar was initially based on it. Thomas Jefferson suggested having twenty and fifty cent coins, but the quarter was created instead, which would be two reales, rather than 8/5. Probably a sensible decision then, as Spanish coinage would continue to circulate on par with the US dollar well into the 19th century, but it leaves us with a somewhat curious seeming denomination, which is entrenched.
Without even thinking about it: Turkey, Zimbabwe, Russia and Turkmenistan all within the last 10 years or so.
I think he was saying “at some point between 1970 and 1980 they introduced new pence”.
When I lived in Korea, I was making 1.2 million won a month! I felt rich.
The Taiwanese currency is the “New Taiwan Dollar,” (though now a NTD is itself only worth about $.03 – I suppose a “New New Taiwan Dollar” would sound faintly ridiculous).
Once upon a time, the Italian lira was the same as the British pound.
Latin “libra pondo”, from which we derive the abbreviation “lb.”
= Italian “Lira”
= French “Livre” (predecessor to the “Franc”.)
= British “Pound Sterling”
= 1 pound of silver.
In the days of yore, a pound of silver was a fairly big chunk of money. Far more than most people needed for everyday purchases. So the sub-units were necessary. It was only after currency was disconnected from bullion, and rampant inflation, that some denominations became jokes.
Thanks!
It still is: a pound of silver is worth about USD 200 at the moment. You’d want some change if you took that to the shop to buy a loaf of bread.
In 1960, France created the new franc, which was equal to 100 old French francs. The old franc was still usable, but it counted as 1 new centime.
According to Wikipedia, up until the changeover to the euro, it was still common in certain circumstances for large sums to be stated in old francs.
Not if you shop at Whole Foods, peasant. 
This begs the question, though, a pound seems like a bad choice for a unit of currency, why not use ounce sterling or grains sterling?
You don’t remember florins?
My good fellow, a florin was simply 2/-
As for crowns, you can still get them from banks, they sometimes issue commemorative crowns same as they do £5 coins every Christmas.
Now then about groats…
Not to mention marks, which were valued at the convenient rate of 13/4 or 2/3rds of a pound.
I mean, you’ve always been thinking to yourself, “Gee, why doesn’t anybody invent a convenient monetary unit that’s 2/3rds of our existing monetary unit?” 16th-century Englishmen, you so crazy.
In fact, florins were a first attempt at a decimalised currency, since a florin is exactly one tenth of a pound. That mean that when Britain finally went decimal, florins could be used interchangeably with 10p coins.
Poland is another example, knocking four digits off the zloty in 1995.
Decimal currency is much easier to work when using a calculator compared to pounds, shillings and pence. Does anyone remember the ready-reckoner books you had to use when working out percentages in the old currency?
But that was also the days before cheap hand-held calculators. If the UK still used Lsd, they would sell calculators that did calculations in Lsd on the UK market.
(Just as the percentage ready-reckoners have gone out with the dodo, so have books with tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions. Why buy a book when a calculator is cheaper, and does it to 10 places instead of 4?)
Shouldn’t there then be a need for a “super unit” of currency–we have an unofficial one where a person says they make “80K” or a car costs “30 grand”–but the fact that we don’t have those as actual units seems to imply that reading and writing strings of zeros isn’t a problem.
And much, much later, French people were still referring to prices of expensive items such as houses in old francs. Even in the 1990s, if someone said “30 millions”, it was possible that they meant FFR 300,000. This usage may have persisted until the franc was replaced by the euro.
When Australia & New Zealand decimalised their currencys they dumped the pound and created a dollar worth 10 old shillings (ie A£1 = A$2). The UK kept the pound sterling as is because it’s a major reserve currency.