Re: OT: the euro & 01.01.02 (was NATLANG/FONT:)
| From: | Padraic Brown <agricola@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, December 21, 2001, 23:00 |
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Am 21.12.01, John Cowan yscrifef:
> > Everything smaller than the dollar, except for one cent and half cent,
>
> Which were (and are, in the case of the cent) copper. The other coins are
> copper-nickel alloy, with the outer surfaces having enough nickel to
> look silver; the dollar coin has some kind of veneer (brass?) that makes
> it look gold.
They are some kind of brass alloy. Most interestingly, they are
clad sandwiches (like our other coins - if you look closely, you
can see the middle layer, which is pure copper); and they have
the same electrical properties as the earlier failures (the
infamous SBA dollar), so that vending machines can accept both.
> Canadian coins look essentially the same, but with different markings
> on the faces, of course. Nickel is ferromagnetic, and in the 60s
> (perhaps still?) one could tell a Canadian nickel from a U.S. one
> because the former, but not the latter, would stick to a permanent magnet.
To my knowledge, Canadian coins are still (pure) nickel.
> I think not, but it used to be common to price articles at 1 bit,
> meaning you could pay for them with a dime and receive no change,
> or with a quarter and receive a dime in change -- it balances out.
> I remember being a child in the early 60s and not knowing what
> "two bits" (a quarter) meant.
The term was only a century out of date by then!
> <rant>Pennies are a god-awful nuisance and should be abolished.
Get on the bandwaggon! There have been some ideas kicked around
COngress aimed at no longer making them.
> We
> spend a fortune in minting them every year, and most of them go straight
> to coin jars and stay there almost forever.
To be honest, they pay for themselves that way. It may cost half
a cent to mint; but the fact that billions of them sit in jars,
never being redeemed, means a positive sum in the Treasury's
books.
> It's only the fanatical conservatism of the U.S. in such matters that
> keeps them in being at all.</rant>
Actually, it's more like "typical American unwillingness to
change". I think there must also be a dash of "no leadership
amongst the leaders" in Government - i.e., they don't want to do
anything more than maintain status quo, regardless of ideological
bent. The same thing keeps us from the sensible discontinuation
of the rag dollar and the sensible introduction of $2, $5 and
possibly $10 coins. We are the only industrial country left with
such a low valued paper note.
Padraic.
--
Bethes gwaz vaz ha leal.
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