Spesmilo

The spesmilo (, plural spesmiloj ) is an obsolete decimal international currency, proposed in 1907 by René de Saussure and used before World War I by a few British and Swiss banks, primarily the Ĉekbanko Esperantista.

The spesmilo was equivalent to one thousand spesoj, and worth 0.733 g of pure gold (0.8 grams of 22 karat gold), which at the time was about one-half United States dollar, two shillings (one-tenth of a pound sterling) in Britain, one Russian ruble, or $2 1/2$ Swiss francs. On 6 November 2022, that quantity of gold would be worth about US$43.50, £38 sterling, €44, ₽2692 Russian roubles, and SFr 43 Swiss francs.

The basic unit, the speso (from Italian spesa or German Spesen; spesmilo is Esperanto for "a thousand pennies"), was purposely made very small to avoid fractions.

Sign


The spesmilo sign, called spesmilsigno in Esperanto, is a monogram of a cursive capital "S", from whose tail emerges an "m". The currency sign is often typeset as the separate letters Sm.

In Unicode, the character is assigned in version 5.2.

Miscellaneous

 * The stelo was another currency unit used by the Universal League from 1942 to the 1990s.
 * An Esperanto version of the board game Monopoly uses play money in denominations of spesmiloj.