Us older brits have the edge on you there, of course, Jackie. We were all taught out times-tables up to 12, because we had the "old" money then: 12 pence to a shilling, twenty shillings to a pound. A much easier system, in many ways, because there are so many more exact fractions of 12 than of 10.

What was needed was not a move to a universal decimal, but to a universal duodecimal system. (For which there were quite a number of advocates, as I remember.)