Metrication in the United Kingdom that reported in 1818, and again in Parliament by Sir John Wrottesley in 1824. Another Royal Commission was set up 1838 by Chancellor of the Exchequer Thomas Spring Rice and it reported in 1841 that decimal coinage was required first. A third commission in 1853 advocated decimal coinage in the form £1 : 10 florins : 100 cents: 1000 mils. The first florins (one tenth of a pound sterling) were struck in 1849 as silver coins weighing and having a diameter of . An early supporter of the "Decimal Association" was the mathematician Augustus de Morgan whose articles supporting the
Coins of the pound sterling exact decimal equivalent values continued in use after 1971 alongside the new coins, albeit with new names (the shilling became equivalent to the 5p coin, with the florin equating to 10p), and the others were withdrawn almost immediately. The use of florins and shillings as legal tender in this way ended in 1991 and 1993 when the 5p and 10p coins were replaced with smaller versions. Indeed, while pre-decimalisation shillings were used as 5p coins, for a while after decimalisation many people continued to call the new 5p coin a shilling, since it remained of a pound, but was now