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to 86,400 (60×60×24) seconds. The revolutionary second was, therefore, a fraction shorter thght="0%e normal second. Decimal time became mandatory in 1794 and watches were produced with the numbers going up to ten. Yet the new system was completely bewildering to the populace and abandoned after little more than six months. An hour with 100 minutes is also not as convenient as an hour with 60 minutes, since 100 does not have as many divisors as 60. You can divide 100 by 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25 and 50, but you can divide 60 by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30. The failure of decimal time was a small victory for dozenal thinking. Not only does 12 divide into 60 but it also divides into 24, the number of hours in a day.

Revolutionary watch with decimal and traditional clock face.

A more recent campaign to decimalize time also flopped. In 1998 the Swiss conglomerate Swatch launched Swatch Internet Time, which divided the day into 1000 parts called beats (equivalent to 1min 26.4secs). The manufacturer sold watches that displayed its ‘revolutionary vision of time’ for a year or so before sheepishly removing them from its catalogue.

The French and Swiss, however, are not the only Western nations to have had barmy counting procedures in the not too distant past. The tally stick, which became outdated the moment the first Sumerian printed his first cuneiform tablet, was used as a form of British currency until 1826. The Bank of England used to issue souped-up tally sticks that were worth a monetary value based on the distance of a mark from the base. A document written in 1186 by the Lord Treasurer Richard Fitzneal set out the values as:

£1000

thickness of the palm of the hand

£100

breadth of a thumb

£20

breadth of a little finger

£1

width of a swollen barleycorn

The procedure the Treasury used was, in fact, a system of ‘double tallies’. A piece of wood was split down the middle, giving two parts – the stock and the foil. A value was marked – tallied – on the stock and was also marked on the foil, which acted like a receipt. If I lent some money to the Bank of England, I would be given a stock with a notch indicating the amount – which explains the origin of the words stockholder and stockbroker – while the bank kept the foil, which had a matching notch.

This practice was abandoned barely two centuries ago. In 1834, the Treasury decided to incinerate the obsolete pieces of wood in a furnace under the Palace of Westminster, the seat of British government. The fire, however, spread out of control. Charles Dickens wrote: ‘The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses [of government] were reduced to ashes.’ Obscure financial instruments have often impacted on the work of government, but only the tally stick has brought down a parliament. When the palace was rebuilt it had a brand new clock tower, Big Ben, which quickly became the most recognizable landmark in London.

An argument often used in favour of the imperial system over metric is that the words sound better. A case in point is the measures for wine:

2 gills = 1 chopin

2 chopins = 1 pint

2 pints = 1 quart

2 quarts = 1 pottle

2 pottles = 1 gallon

2 gallons = 1 peck

2 pecks = 1 demibushel

2 demibushels = 1 bushel (or firkin)

2 firkins = 1 kilderkin

2 kilderkins = 1 barrel

2 barrels = 1 hogshead

2 hogsheads = 1 pipe

2 pipes = 1 tun

This system is base two, or binary, which is usually expressed using the digits 0 and 1. Numbers in binary are the numbers you would use in base ten when only 0 and 1 appear. In other words, the sequence that begins 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000. So, 10 is two, 100 is four, 1000 is eight and so on, with each extra 0 on the end representing multiplication by two. (Which is just like base ten – adding a 0 on the end of a number is multiplication by ten.) In the wine measures, the smallest unit is a gill. Two gills makes a chopin, 4 gills a pint, 8 gills a quart, 16 gills a