Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/30

22 so far as halves and quarters are concerned;" and another authority, Mr. A. Franklin, himself a professional auditor and accountant, states that binary subdivisions are "the most natural and most convenient."

Jackson, in his "Modern Metrology," thoughtfully writes:—"Measures sub-divided on a binary scale possess considerable convenience in actual weighing and measuring (which is the main object of commercial measures), as a half of any weight or measure throughout the series can always be conveniently arrived at, an advantage conceded neither by decimal subdivision, nor, strictly, even by duo-decimal subdivision, but only arrived at by the device of treating the term 1½, an improper fraction, as a special digit. . . . A binary subdivision is a far more civilised arrangement for commercial purposes, and seems to have been adopted both by the commercial and by the more intellectual nations; the Romans for commercial purposes, the Hindus, the Germanic, and Teutonic races; while decimalisation was favoured by primitive races only for commercial purposes, though even now well adapted to the scientiﬁc purposes and calculations of advanced races." This principle was, no doubt, suggested to their uneducated minds by the possession of so many ﬁngers.