I was just reflecting on the fact that things are so much easier
these days now that there are only 100 pennies in the English
pound. The reason for my ruminations is that, when I was a young
lad, I used to read an electronics hobbyist magazine called
Practical Electronics . One of the articles was called "Take 20"
because of these projects required 20 or fewer components and
cost 20 shillings or less. Now, when I'm explaining things to my
American friends (or to younger folks from England), this is the
point where things start to become a little confusing, because
someone will invariably ask "What's a shilling?" This opens the
door to a mind-boggling discussion on one of the currencies of
yesteryear. Prior to 1971, the British used a currency system
based on “pounds, shillings, and pence.” This was also written
as LSD, where the “L” comes from the Latin word libra and the D
comes from the Latin word denarius , which was a type of coin in
Roman times. The way in which this worked was that there were 12
pennie