Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Will Boris Johnson reestablish the guinea?



During the past days I had been talking about the guinea as payment for hotels, which I had seen during the early 1970ies while being on a language vacation on the Isle of Wight. This morning while driving to work I’ve heard about Carl Maria [Friedrich Ernst] von Weber (* 18th or 19th of November 1786 - † 5th of June 1826 in London), who had been paid in guineas. So, the question crossed my mind, if Boris Johnson will reestablish the guinea.

In older times there had been the halfpenny (½ d), the penny (d), threepence (3 d), sixpence (6 d) , the shilling (s = 12 d), the florin ( 2 s), half crown (2 s 6 d), crown (2 florin or 5 s), half sovereign (10 s; the note also called 10 bob note), the sovereign or pound (20 s), and the guinea (21 s). Until 1960 there had also been the farthing (¼ d). 240 pennies made a pound. A penny weighed 9.4 g; this shows the British understatement as 240 pennies didn’t weigh a pound but more than 2 kg or 4 lb and 15.5781 oz (2.256 kg).

Will Boris Johnson reestablish the guinea? Nay, “suspecting the answer know”. I guess even a zealot like Boris Johnson, who in my opinion is guiding Britain into the ditch, won’t leave the decimal system. So I think the guinea won’t come back, “expecting the answer guess”.


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