The practice dates to the 1920s in most areas and by the 1940s, it was everywhere. There are 2 reasons.
In the 1920s, gas was averaging 10-12 cents per gallon. It was difficult to raise prices by 1 cent, because that would represent a 10% increase, which was a lot of money. Gas station owners and oil companies needed a finer pricing method that would allow smaller incremental movements either up or down. So they started the fractions.
In the 1930s there were various state and federal taxes imposed on gasoline sales. Again, because 1 cent would have been a HUGE tax back then, they needed to tax in fractional cent increments. Some of these taxes are still on the books in fractional increments.
Obviously, the practice is completely obsolete today, but it goes to show once you set a "standard" way of doing things, like railroad tracks being 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches apart, no matter how odd or obsolete the logic was to derive it, it persists forever.
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Today's Featured Article - Restoration Story: 1964 JD 2010 Dsl - Part 2 - by Jim Nielsen. Despite having to disassemble the majority of my John Deere 2010's diesel engine, I was still hopeful I could leave the engine-complete with crankshaft and camshaft-in the tractor. This would make the whole engine rebuild job much easier-and much less expensive! I soon found however, that the #4 conrod bearing had disintegrated, taking with it chunks of the crankshaft journal. As a resul
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