Dollar sign

The dollar sign or peso sign ($) is a symbol primarily used to indicate a unit of currency.

History and proposed origins

The sign is attested in business correspondence between British North America and Mexico in the 1770s, as referring to the Spanish-Mexican peso.^[1] The piastre was known as "Spanish dollar" in British North America and it was adopted as U.S. currency in 1785, together with the term "dollar" and the $ sign. The first instance of the symbol on U.S.A. currency is on the reverse of a $1 coin first issued in February, 2007, under the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.^[2]

The sign's ultimate origins are not certain^[3] although it is widely accepted that it comes from the Spanish coat of arms, which carries the two Pillars of Hercules and the motto Plus Ultra in the shape of an "S".

Spanish coat of arms

The Pillars of Hercules with "S"-shaped ribbon in the Town Hall of Seville, (Spain) (16th century)

The most popular explanation is that the dollar sign derives from the Spanish coat of arms engraved on the Spanish colonial silver coins "Real de a Ocho" ("piece of eight"), or Spanish dollar under circulation in the Spanish colonies of America and Asia, as well as in the Thirteen Colonies and later the United States and Canada.

The Spanish coat of arms has two columns (||), which represent the Pillars of Hercules and an "S"-shaped ribbon around each, with the motto "Non Plus Ultra" originally, and later "Plus Ultra".^[4]

In 1492, King Ferdinand II of Aragon put Gibraltar under the new joined rule of the Spanish throne. He adopted the symbol of the Pillars of Hercules and added the Latin phrase Non plus ultra – meaning "and nothing further", indicating "[this is] the end of the (known) world". But as Christopher Columbus in 1492 travelled to the Americas, the saying was changed to Plus Ultra – as there was more out there.^[5] This symbol was especially adopted by Charles V and was a part of his coat of arms as a symbol of his American possessions and riches. When the Spanish conquistadores found gold and silver in the New World, Charles V's symbol was stamped on the coins made from these metals. These coins with the Pillars of Hercules over two hemispheres (columnarios) were spread around America and Europe, and the symbol was ultimately adopted by the country that became the United States and by many of the continent's other independent nations. Later on salesmen wrote signs that, instead of saying dollar, had this handwritten symbol, and in turn this developed to the simple S with two vertical bars.

The Pillars of Hercules around the modern coat of arms of Spain.

There is also another explanation that makes the sign derive from where "$" is a corruption of the letters "PS" or , used as an abbreviation for pesos.^[6][7]

Alternate hypotheses

There are a number of alternative origin theories, with several degrees of verifiability and academic acceptance.

From 'US'

That $ is a monogram of U and S (United States), which was used as a mark 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 double-stroke dollar sign has been used to refer to the U.S. currency. Thus, the one-stroke design may have been modified to the double-stroke design to represent United States currency. This idea was largely popularized by the novel Atlas Shrugged by philosopher Ayn Rand^[8]. It does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use in the time of the Thirteen Colonies before their independence as the United States.

Symbol used on the 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'). This explanation is widely discarded, in spite of the tendency of neo-classic Roman Republic influences in styles evident in other early US government designs, such as the Capitol and Senate buildings.

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.

Sign used on the 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).

Unit of silver

The dollar symbol was in use in colonial times before the American Revolution. Prices were often quoted in units of silver, as the Spanish "piece of eight" was in common use for payment of goods and services. 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.

In Greek mythology

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.

Other theories

Another possibility is that it derives from the British notation 8/ for eight shillings, referring to the Spanish 8 reales coin ("piece of eight") which later became the United States dollar. Others derive it from the Portuguese Cifrão sign .^[9]

Image of 1768 Spanish Colonial Real silver coin, showing PTSI ($) mint mark in lower right quadrant. It also shows the columns around the hemispheres (this time displayed one at the side of the other).

A common explanation is that the symbol is derived from the numeral eight with a slash through it 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.

Still another explanation holds that the dollar sign is derived from (or at least inspired by) the mint mark on Spanish colonial silver coins ("real" or "piece 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 bears an undeniable resemblance to the single-stroke dollar sign (see picture). The Potosí mine is generally accepted as having been the largest single silver strike in history. Silver coins minted in Potosí would have been in common use in colonial America and its mint mark widely recognized. Poorly documented explanations sustains that the symbol represents an snake, guarding a bag, and that it was used in Tironian notes.

First cast dollar symbol

According to a plaque in the burgh of St Andrews in Scotland the first dollar symbol was cast in a type-foundry in Philadelphia in 1797 that belonged to Scottish immigrant John Baine. John Baine had lodged in a house in South Street in St. Andrews with Alexander Wilson, the father of Scottish type-founding.

The plaque on the bookshop on the corner of South Street and Church Street in St. Andrews.

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 to define variables in the PHP programming language and scalar variables in the Perl programming language (see Sigil (computer programming)).
• In the AutoIt automation script language, any variable is required to have a $ at the beginning of its name.
• 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 prompt command 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.

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:

• Brazilian real
• Cape Verde escudo
• Chilean peso
• Portuguese escudo (defunct)

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.

See also

• Euro sign
• Pound sign

References

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