Back when I was in college and grad school, we still used microfiche and the Dewey Decimal System.

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In a country that embraced the decimal system earlier and more enthusiastically than many western ones, anything containing a numeral like two just seems odd.

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When I made this proposal, only slightly facetiously, in a roomful of self-described education entrepreneurs, it was if I'd said that Dewey had plagiarized his decimal system.

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It is only now, 400 years after the invention of the decimal system by Simon Stevin, a forgotten Belgian tradesman, that counting time in tens has become an economic imperative.

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Academia Barilla's many American students head first for books on American cooking, says Giancarlo Gonizzi, the librarian who classified its contents along the lines of the Dewey decimal system to help users find their way around.

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The system was absurd, and adoption of decimal currency was good for the "lowest common denominator" and everyone else.

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