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 On 31 August 1971, the 1d and 3d were officially withdrawn from circulation, ending the transition period.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
Word (computer architecture) may use other sizes, and many other sizes have been used historically, including 9, 12, 18, 24, 26, 36, 39, 40, 48, and 60 bits. Several of the earliest computers (and a few modern as well) used binary-coded decimal rather than plain binary, typically having a word size of 10 or 12 decimal digits, and some early decimal computers had no fixed word length at all. The size of a word can sometimes differ from the expected due to backward compatibility with earlier computers. If multiple compatible variations or a family of processors share a common architecture and instruction set