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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Neal, post: 3198380, member: 43872&quot;]Remember in the early days of US coinage, there were actually relatively few US coins.&nbsp; Foreign coins of all sorts circulated in gold and silver, and even in copper.&nbsp; A merchant would often be more interested in the fineness and weight than a stated denomination:&nbsp; convert to unfamiliar dollars quickly from Spanish reals, British shillings, crowns, and sovereigns, Dutch stuivers and gulden, and French sous, livres, and Louis d&#039;or (and, by 1795, francs), all of which might be in a merchant&#039;s cash drawer on a given day.&nbsp; No other country on earth had adopted a decimal system of money until France followed our example, and mental computing in units of 10 was as confusing to them as for modern Americans trying to figure out decimal system measurements, and for the same reasons.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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