A Curious Calculation.

Cromwell Argus, Volume 2, Issue 84, 20 June 1871, Page 7

A Curious Calculation.

With regard to the two hundred million war indemnity stipulated to be paid by France into the coffers of Germany, the following elaborate calculation has been | made. Figures fail to convey to the mind an adequate impression of this enormous sum, and we can form but a faint idea of what £200,000,000 really is without practically illustrating it. £200,000,000 in sovereigns would weigh 1560 tons. To convey this sum we should require 3138 carts, each loaded with half a ton of the precious metal, or with 63,735 sovereigns. Let us horse three treasure carts, and arrange that a space of six feet shall inj tervene between each cart. From the | head of one horse to the head of the next i would be a space of 20 feet, so that we I should have one unbroken line of carts nearly twelve miles in length. If we load railway waggons with the coin, and place in each waggon ten tons’ weight of sovereigns, we should require four trains, each composed of forty carriages. Let us pile these sovereigns one upon the other, and we shall build a golden column more than 197 miles high. If these 200,000,000 of sovereigns are placed upon the ground, and arranged in one continuous and unbroken line, each coin touching its neighbor, we shall have a golden girdle nearly 275-1 miles long, equal to the coastline of i England and Wales and Ireland. If we j place 21 sovereigns in a row, we shall find | the length of the line to be 18 inches. Let us place tlusse rows of 21 in close order—each row, as well as each coin, touching its neighbor—and we shall find the last row more than 131 miles distant from the first; that is, we shall he able to walk upon a pavement of sovereigns 18 inches wide, which extends from Manchester to Worcester, or, if we take another route, from Manchester to within a few miles of Bedford. Let us again collect all ! these coins, and place them closely together on the ground in the form of a square. The sides of the square will be 1100 feet, or 367 yards long, and the space enclosed will cover nearly 28 acres—space enough for several thousands of soldiers to manoeuvre over the golden surface. Allowing the sovereign to be 1-16 th of an inch in thickness, and to occupy a space 48-55 th of an inch square, we shall require a room ten feet high, ten feet wide, and sixty-three feet long, in which to pack the 200,000,000 ; and it will employ a cashier seventeen years, forty-four weeks four days three hours and twenty minutes to count them, if he counts on an average one hundred in a minute, and is employed six hours daily on the three hundred and eleven working days of the year.