In a comment on a message from Julian Dyer, Robbie wondered why the Dutch
have the sign "Fl" for their currency.  (Something besides mechanical
music, but a jump aside every now and then is not bad.)

 [ MMD travelers do enjoy spending money in the Netherlands! ;) -- Robbie

Well, the Dutch "gulden" was originally a golden coin, just like the
Guilder, as produced in Florence (Italy).  In Italian this coin was
called a "florine", which in French became "florin", and which led to
the Dutch name "florein", abbreviated as "fl".  Other kinds of this
abbreviation can be found, like "Hfl : Holland florein", or just "f".
The most common nowadays on bills is "Dfl", for "Dutch florin".

By the way: the word "dollar" comes from the Dutch word "Daalder" and
the German word "Taler".   These coins are no longer used; however,
the Dutch do have a coin called "Rijksdaalder", worth f 2.50.

Julian Dyer informed us about Librae, Solidii, and Denarii.  It's correct
that these are Latin words.  They were brought to Britain by the Romans,
together with all kinds of Roman measurements for weights, and so on.

On the European continent, after the Romans, we met the Frenchman
Napoleon Buonaparta.  He succeeded in this way, in that he gave us
uniform metric sizes and laws, and other things such as driving on the
right side of the road.  Since he, like the ancient Romans, did not
succeed in occupying Britain, the British stayed with their Roman
inheritance, including driving on the left side, and non-metric sizes.

Do you know why the first railway systems had their rails so wide?  It's
because the rails were placed on the same distance as used for old Roman
carts.  This was a fixed size.

The Romans, building roads all over Europe, needed to be able to use
their carts on roads everywhere, so they set up prescriptions on
how to build a road, and how wide the tracks should be, and doing so
they also set a standard for cart-builders, and later train-makers.

Jan Kijlstra

 [ The history of the standard railroad gauge appears in a humorous
 [ article in Digest 961018, "How Mil Specs Live Forever", and in
 [ Digest 961029 Peter Wellburn tells a surprising epilogue.  -- Robbie