Twelve Tiny Fingers The big switch to decimality will be
a load of fun, and I look forward to the transition period, quite seriously, with as much innocent pleasure as to a week at the seaside. But how on earth did we ever come to adopt our multiple-of-twelve notion for pennies and inches in the first place? Lesser breeds stuck to their fingers and made everything simple. My own theory (utterly un- supported by evidence of any kind) is that our forefathers had twelve fingers. I did once meet a Scottish family in which six-fingered hands were hereditary, and I bet you everybody was the same until those Danes and Normans and such-like flooded the island and diluted the stock, or started a drive for conformity; and left us with only ten fingers on which to count our twelve pence. Clearly, it's going to be easier to junk two of the pence than to breed back the missing digits.
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