Dollar sign
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Originally the peso sign, $ (called dollar sign in English) is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various dollar and peso units of currency around the world.
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Origin
The sign is attested in business correspondence between the British, Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans 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 "$" sign has been variously accounted for. The most widely accepted theory is that it derives from the Spanish coat of arms engraved on the Spanish colonial silver coins, the "Real de a ocho" or Spanish dollars that were in circulation in the Spanish colonies in America and Asia. The Spanish dollars were also legal tender in the English colonies in North America, which later became part of the U.S. and Canada.
In 1492, King Ferdinand II of Aragon adopted the symbol of the Pillars of Hercules and added the Latin phrase Non Plus Ultra meaning "no further", indicating "this is the end of the (known) world." But when Christopher Columbus discovered America, the legend was changed to "Plus Ultra", "beyond."
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The symbol was adopted by Charles V and was part of his coat of arms representing Spain's American possessions. The symbol was later stamped on coins minted in gold and silver these metals. These coins that depicted the Pillars of Hercules over two hemispheres and a small "S"-shaped ribbon around each, were spread throughout America, Europe and Asia. For the sake of simplicity, traders wrote signs that, instead of saying dollar or peso, had this symbol made by hand, and this in turn evolved into a simple S with two vertical bars.[3]
There's another documented explanation that states that the sign is the result of the evolution of the Spanish and Mexican scribal abbreviation "ps" for pesos. This theory, derived from a study of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscripts, explains that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark."[4][5][6]
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]
Drawn with one vertical line ($)
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.
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, composed of the letters "PTSI" superimposed, bears a strong resemblance to the single-stroke dollar sign (see 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.
Alchemic sigil for cinnabar
An alchemic sigil for cinnabar dating at least as far back as the early eighteenth century. [8]
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.
Drawn with two vertical lines
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 dollar sign 
: the bottom of the 'U' disappears into the bottom curve of the 'S', leaving two vertical lines. This theory does not consider the fact that the symbol was already in use before the formation of the United States.[9]
"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.
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).
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').
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, United States in 1797 by the Scottish immigrant John Baine.
The dollar sign did not appear on U.S. coinage until February 2007, when it was used on the reverse of a $1 coin authorized by the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.[10]
The dollar sign appears on the reverse of the 1934 $100,000 note as well as the reverse of the 1917 $1 note.
Use in computer programming
The symbol "$" has Unicode code point U+0024 (inherited from Latin-1).
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 their 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)[11]
- $ signifies the end of a line or the file in text editors ed, ex, vi, pico and derivatives, and, as a consequence[11]
- $ matches the end of a line or string in sed, grep, and POSIX and Perl regular expressions.[11]
- $ was used for defining string variables in older versions of the BASIC programming language ("$" was often pronounced "string" instead of "dollar" in this use).[11]
- $ is used for defining hexadecimal constants in Pascal-like languages such as Delphi, as well as in certain variants of assembly language.[11]
- $ 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.[11]
- In most shell scripting languages, $ is used for interpolating environment variables, special variables, arithmetic computations and special characters, and for performing translation of localised strings.[11]
- 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.
- The using history expansion
!$(same as!!1$and!-1$) means the last argument of the previous command in bash,!-2$expands to the last argument of the penultimate command,!5$expands into the last argument of the fifth command and so on. For example:
- The using history expansion
> touch my_first_file > echo "This is my file." > !$
-
- where
!$expands intomy_first_file.
- where
- $ is used in the ALGOL 68 programming language to delimit transput format regions.
- $ is used in the TeX typesetting language to delimit mathematical regions.[11]
- $ is used by the
promptcommand in DOS to insert special sequences into the DOS command prompt string.[11] - Formulas in Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheets use $ to indicate an absolute cell reference.[11]
- In many versions of FORTRAN 66, $ could be used as an alternative to a quotation mark for delimiting strings.[11]
- In PL/M, $ can be used for putting a visible separation between syllables of identifiers.
For example, 'Some$Name' will refer to the same thing as 'SomeName' in PL/M.[11] - In the LDAP directory access protocol, $ is used as a line separator in various standard entry attributes such as postalAddress.[11]
- In Haskell, $ is used as a function application operator.[11]
- In Microsoft Windows, $ is used at the end of the share name to hide a shared folder. For example, \\server\share will be visible and accessible through browsing, while \\server\share$ will only be accessible by explicit reference.[11]
- In several JavaScript frameworks beginning with Prototype.js and also popular in jQuery, $ is a common utility class.
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 paʻanga
- Hong Kong
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.
In Mexico and another peso-using countries, the cifrão is used as a dollar sign when a document uses pesos and dollars at the same time, to avoid confusions, but, when it used alone, usually is represented as USD $ (United States Dollars). Example: USD $5 (Five dollars).
In the United States, Mexico and English-speaking Canada, the dollar/peso symbol precedes the number, unlike almost all other units. Five dollars/pesos is written and printed as $5, whereas five cents is written as 5¢.
See also
- Euro sign
- Indian rupee sign
- Pound sign
- Yen sign
References
- ↑ Lawrence Kinnaird (July 1976). "The Western Fringe of Revolution," The Western Historical Quarterly 7(3), 259.
- ↑ "Origin of Dollar Sign is Traced to Mexico", Popular Science 116 (2): 59, 1930, ISSN 0161-7370, http://books.google.com/books?id=4ykDAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#PPA59,M1
- ↑ Nussbaum, Arthur: A history of the dollar. New York : Columbia University Press, 1957.
- ↑ Florian Cajori ([1929]1993). A History of Mathematical Notations (Vol. 2), 15-29.
- ↑ Arthur S. Aiton and Benjamin W. Wheeler (May 1931). "The First American Mint", The Hispanic American Historical Review 11(2), 198 and note 2 on 198.
- ↑ Riesco Terrero, Ángel (1983). Diccionario de abreviaturas hispanas de los siglos XIII al XVIII: Con un apendice de expresiones y formulas juridico-diplomaticas de uso corriente. Salamanca: Imprenta Varona, 350. ISBN 84-300-9090-8
- ↑ F. Cajori discusses the origins of the slash-8, the Potosi mint mark, the Pillars of Hercules, the "U.S.", the Roman sestertius, and the Boaz and Jachin theories and discounts them in A History of Mathematical Notations (Vol. 2), 15-20.
- ↑ Gettings, Fred (1981). The Dictionary of Occult, Hermetic, and Alchemical Sigils and Symbols. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. p. 86. ISBN 0-7100-0095-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=W-E9AAAAIAAJ.
- ↑ James, James Alton (1970) [1937]. Oliver Pollock: The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press. p. 356. ISBN 9780836955279. http://books.google.com/books?id=kht_DEllNccC.
- ↑ Pub. L. No. 109-145, 119 Stat. 2664 (Dec. 22, 2005).
- ↑ 11.00 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 11.10 11.11 11.12 11.13 11.14 "Dollar Sign ($)" (PDF). http://www.scribd.com/doc/6759703/Dollar-Sign-. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
- 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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