Talk:United States dollar/History

Adopted by the United States Congress on July 6, 1785
I copied the date to the article because I saw that on the homepage (today in history). User 216.205.224.10 changed that to July 8. But 216.205.224.10 is a shared IP, and I am no US history expert. So can someone verify? Thanks. --Chochopk 00:05, 7 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The dollar as a "monetary unit" was officially adopted on July 6, 1785 by the Continental Congress (not the United States Congress). The evidence of this is found in the Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, Volume 29, Page 500  The Library of Congress website says: "The Second Continental Congress ran from May 10, 1775, to March 2, 1789"


 * The confusion may have arisen from the fact that the "value" of the dollar was set on August 8, 1786, found in Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, Volume 31, Page 503 . Note the reference to the types of coins to be minted, including a .20 of a dollar coin to be called a "double dime" on this page.


 * There is also a very interesting report by the grand committee regarding the new currency about how it arrived at its recommendation made on May 13, 1785, found in the Library of Congress, Journals of the Continental Congress, Volume 28, Page 351 there is also in the report a coin design drawing with 13 stars and the inscription apparently “CONFEDERATIO”, here is an image of the minted coin:  and another  - Britcom 13:38, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Mills and Thalers
There seems to be a prety big mistake on the page regarding mills. There is no such animal, and never was. The US coin page makes no mention of them and the mill page says that while the mill was approved, it was never minted. This page says it was minted, and provides an explaination for why production was stopped.

The word "thaler" from which the word "dollar" evolved from actually comes from a woman by the name of Elizabeth Thaler. Her image adorned the obverse of the most commonly traded, pre-revolutionary silver coin in the colonies. The coins were called "thalers", and somewhere, somehow, like a lot of words in American English, "thaler" became "dollar", and we still refer to American currency as "dollars" to this day.


 * Mills, while never produced by the federal government, were produced by local governments.
 * Secondly, I have never heard that explanation, and quite frankly, strikes me as rather unlikely


 * Milles as used in the article are not specific coins or bills, like a one cent coin or a $50 bill. The term is for a denomonation of money of account current in the United States.  The coinage act of 1792 provided for a common currency for the nation, naming this unit the Dollar.  Section 20 of the same provided for the mille, even though there was to be no coinage in milles.  Since Milles have never been in common use, and even when used today (eg gasoline prices) are not named, I have changed the article to reflect the spelling of 1792.  As an aside, while section 9 of the act clearly refers to an 'eagle' as a denomonation of $10, as opposed to a name for a specific coin, section 20 provides for money of account in public proceedings to conform to the dollar, disme, cent, mille standard, without further mention of the 'eagle'.

The term "buck"
The article states the following:

The word "buck" is commonly used by Americans to refer to a U.S. dollar. It originated with the colonial fur trade.

Is this an indisputable fact? I've heard various theories about the origin of the name. At any rate, given that a deer is not a fur-bearing animal (a buck, of course, is a male deer), I don't quite see the connection with the fur trade. A little more in the way of explanation would be nice.

Added "Buck" Term
I just wanted to clarify that under the terminology for $1 bills, I added the term "buck" because it is a very common term for a dollar. I just wanted to clarify that under the terminology for $1 bills, I added the term "buck" because it is a very common term for a dollar. Chile 02:51, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of $
- THIS IS REDICULOUSLY UNHELPFUL --- Everyone is editing the part about how the dollar sign came around. But honestly, the discussion behind is it 'well, i dont believe it', 'i believe this is wrong'. Id give more credit to Ayn Rand than whoever the hell you random people are. Get some evidence, rewrite the whole thing, and get rid of the OBVIOUSLY biased language behind it all. I loved wikipedia untill this article made me vomit at the idea of people being able to write a credible encyclopedia. Awful. Just awful. - Tony -

I removed the following explanation of th $:
 * , which was originally a superimposed U and S

Because I believe it is wrong. I believe the $ is derived from the sign for Imperial Spain (which, as the article points out, was the source of the dollar). Can someone offer historical evidence for the US claim? Slrubenstein
 * I believe it actually comes not from the sign for Imperial Spain, but rather from the Spanish abbreviation for "peso", which slowly overtime became the dollar symbol. -- SJK

We agree that the $ derives from Spain, and is not a superimposed U and S. But I am stil not sure about the history. I do not think $ is an abbreviation of Peso; my guess is the peso (just spanish for "weight") also had the Imperial Seal on it during the colonial period. I found this:
 * Cuando en Estados Unidos se decidió que la moneda única sería el dólar coexistía todavía el Spanish Dollar acuñado con el escudo de España en una de sus caras. Como se ve en la imagen tiene en sus laterales las columnas de Hércules y unos lazos que las abrazan con la inscripción "PLUS ULTRA".


 * Para indicar que se pagaba con esa moneda ponían detrás de la cantidad el signo $ que recuerda la torre y la cinta que le abraza. Desde entonces pasó a ser el símbolo universal del dólar.
 * {The United States decided that its currency, the dollar, would coexist with the Spanish Dollar coined with the shield of Spain on one of its faces. As it is seen in the image, it has the columns of Hercules and a ribbon with the inscription “PLUS ULTRA”. In order to indicate that it was paid with that currency, they put next to the amount the sign $ that recalls the columns and the ribbon. Ever since then it became the universal symbol of the dollar. Translated by --Britcom 09:10, 27 July 2006 (UTC) }

on the web-site, http://usuarios.lycos.es/aurenauta/spanishdolar.htm which suggests that the two vertical lines represent the pillars of Hercules, and the S represented the sash, but I do not know how authoritative this source is! Slrubenstein

It isn't. As reported, the $ sign comes from a melded PS, meaning "peso". The first written example has only one slash, not two, which sort of puts a hole in the Pillars of Hercules idea. Anyway, the whole thing was clarified by Dr. Florian Cajori - I'll find you a cite, but it may be on the Straight Dope archive - I'll try to find it when I'm not behind a firewall :) User:Montrealais


 * Here it is: . - Montr&eacute;alais

I checked the SD site; it sounds like the ps. argument is still conjecture, although I admit no less reasonable than the Spanish seal conjecture (also, Cajori was a notable mathematician but not an historian -- which doesn't mean he was wrong, but one would still have to check his research). In any event, we still all agree that it is NOT derived from an abbreviation for "United States," which is what the article originally claimed. Slrubenstein

There is a whole article discussing the dollar sign. I suggest merging the information here into that article. -- Seitz 21:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

According to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (they make those dollars, after all):
 * The origin of the "$" sign has been variously accounted for. Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation is that it is the result of the evolution of the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. This theory, derived from a study of old manuscripts, explains that the "S," gradually came to be written over the "P," developing a close equivalent to the"$" mark. It was widely used before the adoption of the United States dollar in 1785.

Dollar sign from typewriters?
The article suggests that the dollar sign originated by typing U on a typewriter and then back-spacing for an S. But typewriters developed gradually during the 19th century, and must have been extrememly rare until the 20th century.

A better explanation is found in the article Dollar sign. It was hand-written for decades before anyone typed, and examples are known from before the USA existed. I think the typewriter claim is not credable and should be removed. --GwydionM 19:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)