THE DOLLAR MARK
A correspondent, states the "Manchester' Guardian," who inquires the origin of the dollar mark $ can make his choice from a wide variety of explanations, for nobody seems to know with any certainty whence the mark arose. Our own capital "I" with a stroke, £, stands for "libra," which is the Latin for pound (just as the "s" is derived from "solidus" and the "d" from "denarius") But the'.s of America is a mystery. One -explanation is that it represents the' initials U.S.; another that ,it comes from those Spanish "pieces of eight, "the peso of eight reals, whose symbol was a double eight. Another theory ia that it is a contraction of the letters P and S, used by the Spaniards to indicate the peso, i'et another explanation is also based on the Spanish coinage, for the peso duro bore on the reverse the Pillars of Hercules with a scroll round them, and the strokes in the dollar mark have been said to represent the pillars and the S the scroll! None of the explanations seems very satisfactory.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 110, 5 November 1925, Page 4
Word Count
180
THE DOLLAR MARK
Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 110, 5 November 1925, Page 4
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