Decimal Day use pennies or threepenny pieces, to pay them in multiples of 6d (p, the lowest common multiple of the two systems). Bus companies (at that time many state-owned by the National Bus Company) were another exception, going decimal on Sunday 21 February. Decimal Day itself went smoothly. Criticisms included the small size of the new halfpenny coin and the fact that some traders had taken advantage of the transition to raise prices. Some used new pennies as sixpences in vending machines. After 15 February, shops continued to accept payment in old coins, but always issued change in new coins. The
Decimal time such as 8 h. 72 m. Sometimes in official records, decimal hours were divided into tenths, or "décimes", instead of minutes. Although clocks and watches were produced with faces showing both standard time with numbers 1–24 and decimal time with numbers 1–10, decimal time never caught on; it was not officially used until the beginning of the Republican year III, 22 September 1794, and mandatory use was suspended 7 April 1795 (18 Germinal of the Year III), in the same law which introduced the original metric system. Thus, although decimal time is sometimes referred to as metric time, the metric