British Money

In the United Kingdom money is made in the Royal Mint. It is a British government department responsible for producing the official money of the country. The Royal Mint produces both paper money and coins.

In the Mint the metals come in the form of slabs. The right proportion of each metal is made for the sort of coin. The metals are put into large graphite pots and melted in furnaces for two hours.

Then the metal is poured into moulds which have the shape of bars and left to cool. The bars of metal go through heavy rollers and become thin metal strips. The strips go into a machine which stamps out circles in them. The circles drop into a box. The waste metal is collected and remelted.

After that the circles are annealed: they are heated to red-hot and then dropped into cold water. During the process of annealing the copper takes some oxygen from the air. As a result a thin layer of copper oxide appears on the surface of the circle. This layer is removed with a weak solution of sulphuric acid.

The hot circles are stamped. They pass through a special pressing machine which raises a rim of the coin. The rim will help the coin to live longer. In stamping the soft circle of the future coin it is pressed above and below by two pieces of metal called dies. The upper die stamps the heads of the coin and the lower die stamps the tails. The coin becomes hard again.

When coins are ready they are counted on an automatic machine, inspected by hand. Then they are recounted and bugged up by a machine, tied up, weighed and sent to the bank.

The old British monetary system was very complicated. One pound had 20 shillings (s). One shilling had 12 pennies (d).

The modern British monetary system is decimal. The pound is the biggest unit. One pound (₤) has 100 pence. The coins are one penny, two pence, five pence, ten pence, twenty pence and fifty pence. The banknotes are one pound, five pounds, ten pounds, twenty pounds and fifty pounds.

The British have not joined the Eurozone. They only use the euro in clearing with foreign banks.

Notes:

bar – брусок;

roller – вал, каток;

anneal – обжигать, прокаливать, закалять;

die – штамп, матрица, чекан;

heads – лицевая сторона монеты, орел;

tails – обратная сторона монеты, решка;

clearing – безналичные расчеты между банками.

11. Выпишите из текста английские эквиваленты следующих слов и выраже-

ний:

Монеты, королевский монетный двор, слябы (плоские заготовки), печь, (литейные) формы, бруски, тяжелые валы, тонкие металлические полосы, оставшийся метал, нагреваются докрасна, медь, кислород, серная кислота, горячие кружки штампуют, ободок, штамп, десятичная (система), денежная единица.

12. Письменно ответьте на следующие вопросы:

1. Where is the British money made?

2. Is the modern British monetary system decimal?

3. What is the biggest British monetary unit?

4. Have the British joined the Eurozone?

5. How do they use the euro?

13. Опишите современную денежную систему Великобритании.