Dollar/Peso sign
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The dollar sign or peso sign ($) is a symbol primarily used to indicate a unit of currency.
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[edit] Origin
The sign is attested in business correspondence between British North America and Mexico in the 1770s, as referring to the Spanish-Mexican peso,[1][2] known as "Spanish dollar" or "pieces of eight" in British North America where it was adopted as U.S. currency in 1785, together with the term "dollar" and the $ sign.
The origin of the "$" sign has been variously accounted for. Perhaps the most widely accepted explanation is that it is the result of the evolution of the Spanish and Mexican scribal abbreviation "ps" for pesos. This theory, derived from a study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscripts, explains that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark."[3][4][5][6]
[edit] Alternative hypotheses
There are a number of other theories about the origin of the symbol, some with a measure of academic acceptance, others the symbolic equivalent of folk etymologies.[7]
[edit] Slash 8
That the dollar sign is derived from a slash through the numeral eight, denoting pieces of eight. The Oxford English Dictionary before 1963 held that this was the most probable explanation, though later editions have placed it in doubt.
[edit] Potosi mint mark
That the dollar sign was derived from or inspired by the mint mark on the Spanish "pieces of eight" that were minted in Potosí (in present day Bolivia). The mint mark was composed of the letters "PTSI" superimposed on one another and bear an undeniable resemblance to the single-stroke dollar sign (see above photo). The mark, which appeared on silver coins minted from 1573 to 1825 in Potosí, the largest mint during the colonial period, would have been widely recognized throughout the North American colonies.
[edit] Spanish coat of arms
That the dollar sign derives from the Spanish coat of arms engraved on the Spanish colonial silver coins. The Spanish coat of arms on the coins includes two columns, the Pillars of Hercules and a small "S"-shaped ribbon around each, with the motto "Plus Ultra".[8]
[edit] From 'US'
That $ is a monogram of U. S., used on money bags issued by the United States Mint. The letters U and S superimposed resemble the historical double stroke "$" sign: the bottom of the 'U' disappears into the bottom curve of the 'S', leaving two vertical lines. This theory, popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged [9], does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States
[edit] "Unit of silver"
That it derives from "unit of silver", each unit being one "bit" of the "pieces of eight". Before the American Revolution, prices were often quoted in units of the Spanish dollar. According to this theory, when a price was quoted the capital 'S' was used to indicate silver with a capital 'U' written on top to indicate units. Eventually the capital 'U' was replaced by double vertical hash marks.
[edit] German Thaler
That it derives from the symbol used on a German Thaler. According to Ovason (2004), on one type of thaler one side showed the crucified Christ while the other showed a serpent hanging from a cross, the letters NU near the serpent's head, and on the other side of the cross the number 21. This refers to the Bible, Numbers, Chapter 21 (see Nehushtan).
[edit] Roman sestertius
That the dollar sign goes back to the most important Roman coin, the sestertius, which had the letters 'HS' as its currency sign. When superimposed these letters form a dollar sign with two vertical strokes (the horizontal line of the 'H' merging into the 'S').
[edit] Greek mythology
That the dollar sign may have also originated from Hermes, the Greek god of bankers, thieves, messengers, and tricksters: Besides the crane, one of his symbols was the caduceus, a staff from which ribbons or snakes dangled in a sinuous curve.
[edit] Pillars in the temple of Solomon
That the two vertical lines represent the two cult pillars Boaz and Jachin in the original Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. This is based on the idea that Masonic symbols, such as the All Seeing Eye of God, appear on U.S. currency, although they did not in 1785.
[edit] Later history of the dollar sign
According to a plaque in St Andrews, Scotland, the dollar sign was first cast into type at a foundry in Philadelphia in 1797 by the Scottish immigrant John Baine.
The dollar sign did not appear on U.S. currency until February 2007, when it was used on the reverse of a $1 coin authorized by the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.[10]
[edit] Use in computer programming
As the dollar sign is one of the few symbols that is on the one hand almost universally present in computer character sets, but on the other hand rarely needed in its literal meaning within programming languages, the $ character has been used on computers for many purposes not related to money, including:
- $ was used as a string terminator in CP/M and subsequently also in all versions of 86-DOS, PC-DOS, MS-DOS and derivatives (Int 21h with AH=09h)
- $ signifies the end of a line or the file in text editors ed, ex, vi and derivatives, and consequently:
- $ matches the end of a line or string in sed, grep, and POSIX and Perl regular expressions.
- $ was used to define string variables in older versions of the BASIC programming language ("$" was often pronounced "string" instead of "dollar" in this use).
- $ is used to define hexadecimal constants in Pascal-like languages such as Delphi, as well as in certain variants of assembly language.
- $ is used at the beginnings of names to define variables in the PHP programming language and the AutoIt automation script language, scalar variables in the Perl programming language (see Sigil (computer programming)), and global variables in the Ruby programming language.
- In most shell scripting languages, $ is used to interpolate environment variables, special variables, arithmetic computations and special characters, and to perform translation of localised strings.
- In UNIX-like systems the $ is often part of the command prompt, depending on the user's shell and environment settings. For example, the default environment settings for the bash shell specify $ as part of the command prompt.
- $ is used in the TeX typesetting language to delimit mathematical regions.
- $ is used by the
promptcommand in DOS to insert special sequences into the DOS command prompt string. - Formulas in Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheets use $ to indicate an absolute cell reference.
- In many versions of FORTRAN 66, $ could be used as an alternative to a quotation mark for delimiting strings.
- In PL/M, $ can be used to put a visible separation between syllables of identifiers.
For example, 'Some$Name' will refer to the same thing as 'SomeName' in PL/M. - In the LDAP directory access protocol, $ is used as a line separator in various standard entry attributes such as postalAddress.
- In Haskell, $ is used as a function application operator.
[edit] Currencies that use the dollar or peso sign
In addition to those countries of the world that use dollars or pesos, a number of other countries use the $ symbol to denote their currencies, including:
- Nicaraguan córdoba (usually written as C$)
- Tongan pa'anga
Except the Philippine peso, whose sign is written as 
.
Some currencies use the cifrão 
, similar to the dollar sign, but always with two strokes:
The cifrão is also used to account for over 130,000,000 domestic standard US Mint (1986+) bullion US silver dollars as one dollar per one troy ounce fine (99.9%), thereby avoiding confusion with debased US trade dollar-denominated tokens and Federal Reserve Notes.[citation needed]
In Mexico and another peso users countries, the cifrão is used as a dollar sign when a document use pesos and dollars at the same time, to avoid confusions, but when it used alone, usually is represented as $USD (United States Dollars). Example: $5USD (Five dollars)
In the United States the dollar symbol precedes the number, unlike almost all other units. Five dollars is written and printed as $5, whereas five cents is written as 5¢.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Lawrence Kinnaird (July 1976). "The Western Fringe of Revolution," The Western Historical Quarterly 7(3), 259.
- ^ "Origin of Dollar Sign is Traced to Mexico", Popular Science 116 (2): 59, 1930, ISSN 0161-7370, http://books.google.com/books?id=4ykDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#PPA59,M1
- ^ Florian Cajori ([1929]1993). A History of Mathematical Notations (Vol. 2), 15-29.
- ^ Arthur S. Aiton and Benjamin W. Wheeler (May 1931). "The First American Mint", The Hispanic American Historical Review 11(2), 198 and note 2 on 198.
- ^ Riesco Terrero, Ángel (1983). Diccionario de abreviaturas hispanas de los siglos XIII al XVIII: Con un apendice de expresiones y formulas juridico-diplomaticas de uso corriente. Salamanca: Imprenta Varona, 350. ISBN 84-300-9090-8
- ^ "Origin of the $ Sign", US Bureau of Engraving and Printing website
- ^ F. Cajori discusses the origins of the slash-8, the Potosi mint mark, the Pillars of Hercules, the "U.S.", the Roman sestertius, and the Boaz and Jachin theories and discounts them in A History of Mathematical Notations (Vol. 2), 15-20.
- ^ Nussbaum, Arthur: A history of the dollar. New York : Columbia University Press, 1957.
- ^ Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. 1957. Signet. 1992. p628
- ^ Pub. L. No. 109-145, 119 Stat. 2664 (Dec. 22, 2005).
- Cajori, Florian (1993). 'A History of Mathematical Notations'. New York: Dover (reprint). ISBN 0-486-67766-4. - contains section on the history of the dollar sign, with much documentary evidence supporting the "pesos" theory.
- Ovason, David (2004-11-30). The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill. Harper Paperbacks (reprint). ISBN 0-06-053045-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=SGICN1DT1gsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Secret+Symbols+of+the+Dollar+Bill.
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