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Concept
£sd
Summary
£sd (occasionally written Lsd, spoken as "pounds, shillings and pence" or pronounced ɛl.ɛsˈdiː ) is the popular name for the pre-decimal currencies once common throughout Europe, especially in the British Isles and hence in several countries of the British Empire and subsequently the Commonwealth. The abbreviation originates from the Latin currency denominations librae, solidi, and denarii. In the United Kingdom, these were referred to as pounds, shillings, and pence (pence being the plural of penny).
Although the names originated from popular coins in the classical Roman Empire, their definitions and the ratios between them were introduced and imposed across Western Europe by the Emperor Charlemagne. The £sd system was the standard across much of the European continent (France, Italy, Germany, etc.) for nearly a thousand years, until the decimalisations of the 18th and 19th centuries. As the United Kingdom remained one of the few countries retaining it into the 20th century, the system became particularly associated with Britain. It was King Offa of Mercia who adopted the Frankish silver standard of librae, solidi and denarii into Britain in the late 8th century, and the system was used in much of the British Commonwealth until the 1960s and 1970s, with Nigeria being the last to abandon it in the form of the Nigerian pound on 1 January 1973.
Under this system, there were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound. Although the standard ledger accounting system recorded only pounds, shillings and pence, actual minted coins could represent one, several or fractions of these units. The penny was subdivided into 4 farthings until 31 December 1960, when they ceased to be legal tender in the UK, and until 31 July 1969 there were also halfpennies ("ha'pennies") in circulation. The perceived advantage of such a system was its use in some aspects of mental arithmetic, as it afforded many factors and hence fractions of a pound such as tenths, eighths, sixths and even sevenths and ninths if the guinea (worth 21 shillings) was used.
Official source
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