History
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Etymology[edit]
On 15 January 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began minting coins from silver mined locally in Joachimsthal and marked on reverse with the Bohemian lion. The coins were named Joachimsthaler after the town, becoming shortened in common usage to thaler or taler. The town's name is derived from Saint Joachim, coupled with the German word Thal (Tal in modern spelling), which means 'valley' (cf. the English term dale); the coin is thus "from the valley of [St] Joachim".
This name found its way into other languages, for example:
German — Thaler (or Taler)
Czech, Slovak and Slovenian — tolar
Slovak — toliar
Croatian — talir
Polish — talar
Low German — daler
Dutch — rijksdaalder (or daler)
Danish and Norwegian — rigsdaler
Latvian — dālderis
Swedish — riksdaler
Spanish — dólar (or real de a ocho or peso duro)
Hungarian — tallér
Ethiopian — talari (ታላሪ)
English — dollar
In contrast to other languages which adopted the second part of word joachimsthaler, the first part found its way into Russian language and became efimok [ru], yefimok (ефимок).
The predecessor of the Joachimsthaler was the Guldengroschen or Guldiner which was a large silver coin originally minted in Tirol in 1486 and introduced into the Duchy of Saxony in 1500. The King of Bohemia wanted a similar silver coin, which became the Joachimsthaler.
Europe and colonial North America[edit]
The Spanish dollar, natively called Peso, was the main coin of the Spanish Empire. This coin is from 1739.
The Joachimsthaler of the 16th century was succeeded by the longer-lived Reichsthaler of the Holy Roman Empire, used from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Netherlands also introduced its own dollars in the 16th century: the Burgundian Cross Thaler (Bourgondische Kruisdaalder), the German-inspired Rijksdaalder, and the Dutch lion dollar (leeuwendaalder). The latter coin was used for Dutch trade in the Middle East, in the Dutch East Indies and West Indies, and in the Thirteen Colonies of North America.
For the English North American colonists, however, the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" had always held first place, and this coin was also called the "dollar" as early as 1581. Spanish dollars or "pieces of eight" were distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in the New World and in the Philippines.
Origins of the dollar sign[edit]
Main article: Dollar sign § History
The sign is first attested in business correspondence in the 1770s as a scribal abbreviation "ps", referring to the Spanish American peso, that is, the "Spanish dollar" as it was known in British North America. These late 18th- and early 19th-century manuscripts show that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark, and this new symbol was retained to refer to the American dollar as well, once this currency was adopted in 1785 by the United States.
Adoption by the United States[edit]
Main article: United States dollar
By the time of the American Revolution, the Spanish dólar gained significance because they backed paper money authorized by the individual colonies and the Continental Congress. Because Britain deliberately withheld hard currency from the American colonies, virtually all the non-token coinage in circulation was Spanish (and to a much lesser extent French and Dutch) silver, obtained via illegal but widespread commerce with the West Indies. Common in the Thirteen Colonies, Spanish dólar were even legal tender in one colony, Virginia.
On 2 April 1792, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of silver found in Spanish dollar coins in common use in the states. As a result, the United States dollar was defined as a unit of pure silver weighing 371 4/16th grains (24.057 grams), or 416 grains of standard silver (standard silver being defined as 371.25/416 in silver, and balance in alloy). It was specified that the "money of account" of the United States should be expressed in those same "dollars" or parts thereof. Additionally, all lesser-denomination coins were defined as percentages of the dollar coin, such that a half-dollar was to contain half as much silver as a dollar, quarter-dollars would contain one-fourth as much, and so on.
In an act passed in January 1837, the dollar's weight was reduced to 412.5 grains and alloy at 90% silver, resulting in the same fine silver content of 371.25 grains. On 21 February 1853, the quantity of silver in the lesser coins was reduced, with the effect that their denominations no longer represented their silver content relative to dollar coins.
Various acts have subsequently been passed affecting the amount and type of metal in U.S. coins, so that today there is no legal definition of the term "dollar" to be found in U.S. statute. Currently the closest thing[clarification needed] to a definition is found in United States Code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2: "The Secretary [of the Treasury] shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $1.292929292 a fine troy ounce."
Silver was mostly removed from U.S. coinage by 1965 and the dollar became a free-floating fiat money without a commodity backing defined in terms of real gold or silver. The United States Mint continues to make silver $1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation.
