Decimal Day old coins were returned to the banks and in this way the bulk of them were quickly taken out of circulation. The new halfpenny, penny, and twopence coins were introduced on 15 February 1971. Within two weeks of Decimal Day, the old penny (1d) and old threepenny (3d) coins had left circulation, and old sixpences were becoming rare. On 31 August 1971, the 1d and 3d were officially withdrawn from circulation, ending the transition period. The government intended that in speech the new units would be called "new pence", but the public decided that it was clearer and quicker to
Decimal prolongated into an infinite expansion by adding infinitely many 0. If the rational number is not a decimal fraction, the division may continue indefinitely. However, as all successive remainder are less than the divisor, there are only a finite number of possible remainders, and after some place, the same sequence of digits must be repeated indefinitely in the quotient. That is, one has a "repeating decimal". For example, Conversely, every eventually repeating sequence of digit is the infinite decimal expansion of a rational number. This is a consequence of the fact that the recurring part of a decimal representation is,