Sign Mysteries: History of the US Dollar Symbol $
We all know the designation of the American dollar sign - $ - but the history of its origin is quite mysterious. The publication decided to reveal the secret N + 1 together with the historian Artyom Efimov.
It turned out that the $ sign means not only the dollar, but many other currencies, including the Brazilian real and the Dominican peso.
There is a version that the crossed out letter S was placed on American coins as a sign that they were forbidden to circulate in Spain. But Spain in Spanish begins not with S, but with E, but in Latin - and does with H.
Another version: this is a stylized image of the flags of Hercules. The Pillars of Hercules are rocks on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, which were once considered the boundary of an inhabited world. The Spanish coat of arms under Charles V (1516 – 1556) depicted two columns symbolizing the pillars, and on the flag that wrapped them, it was written “Plus ultra”, i.e. “Still further”, “Beyond”. This emblem was minted on silver pesos, and later on the letter began to graphically denote the money in the form of two vertical lines “entwined” with an S-shaped line.
Finally, the most simple and paleographically convincing version. The letter of the peso-octagon was denoted by "p". All sorts of port and customs scribes, accountants and others so often used this abbreviation that the letters P and S began to merge with time. PS ligatures, increasingly resembling $, appear in Spanish and English manuscripts at the end of the 18th century. At the same time, the US accepts the dollar as the official currency, the model for which was the peso-eight. The first American dollar with $ is minted in Philadelphia in 1797.
Generally speaking, the tradition to denote monetary units by crossed out letters is Roman: denarius is crossed out X (ten asses), sestertia is crossed out IIS ligature (two and semis are half; two and a half asses). They crossed it out so as not to confuse the designation of monetary units with ordinary letters and numbers. £ - crossed out L - pound sign (lat. Libra) as a monetary unit. Already by analogy with the dollar, pound and others, for other currencies they began to invent badges in the form of crossed letters: € - euro, ¥ - Japanese yen, $ - Russian ruble, ₺ - Turkish lira.
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