How did the divide over using commas versus periods to denote decimals and thousands come to be? It seems to me that English speaking countries favor periods for decimals and commas to denote thousands, but many other languages use the opposite.
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The current modern standards were set in place because of the printing press, the comma was adopted by France as they already used the period for other numerical notation, whilst the UK decided to use the period. The use in other countries spread pretty much at the same time as France was pushing everyone to use metric. Most countries that were part of the commonwealth (and the US) stuck with the British standard. In the 1970s Britain switched to the metric system and decimalised its currency and there was also pushes to switch to the comma for a decimal point, but that part got shot down.
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