The E-Sylum:  Volume 10, Number 8, February 25, 2007, Article 12

THE ORIGINS OF THE DOLLAR SIGN

A question from reader Nick Graver prompted me to search for Internet
references on the origin of the U.S. dollar sign ($).  I knew Eric
Newman had done a nice study on the topic, but didn't have a copy handy.
So afterwards I asked Eric about some of the information I found.  A
couple of the web pages referenced a 1929 book by Florian Cajori called
"A History of Mathematical Notations, Volume II: Notations Mainly in
Higher Mathematics."  I was curious to learn whether Eric was aware of
this work, secretly hoping I'd stumbled upon something of use.  But
I wasn't surprised to learn that Eric had already covered that ground.

He writes: "Cajori was a mathematical genius and without studying what
he wrote I would not have been able to write my origin of the dollar
sign article. What I found was new material he did not know about. I
also had to clarify or correct things other people had claimed, because
everyone seemed to want to be the so-called inventor of the dollar
sign. Thus I had to write a lengthy article. I had to study the
Portuguese language as well, as their $ had entirely different meanings.
I have never heard anything new on the subject since I wrote my piece.
Perhaps you or your readers have."

Eric's paper, "The Dollar $ign: Its Written and Printed Origins" was
published in the proceedings of the 1993 American Numismatic Society
Coinage of the America's Conference, "America's Silver Dollars".

The article's abstract is as follows: "British traders and merchants
moving into West Florida and Louisiana after the change of ownership
in 1764 are shown to have converted the Spanish symbol (pS) for the
coined peso into a convenient ligature form beginning about 1768,
thus creating the $ sign. The first conventional $ sign in type is
traced to 1799 rather than to a 1797 symbol of different makeup.
The early uses of the $ sign are illustrated and explained."

Some Internet references on the Origin of the Dollar sign:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_sign
ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/dollar.html  (Scroll down)
pballew.net/dollar.html
alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxorigin.html

  Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum