How old is dollar

Today we are familiar with the phrase pieces of eight from tales of pirates in the Caribbean. Those coins, particularly the Spanish peso or dollar circulated widely in Britain's North American colonies because of a shortage of official British coins. That is why, after the United States gained its independence the new nation chose "dollar" as the name of its currency instead of keeping the pound.

Probably the most famous thaler coins were those minted during the reign of Maria Theresa, Archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia Maria Theresa thalers were in common use in Aden and some other parts of the Middle East as recently as the s. The thaler was the unit of currency in Prussia and some of the other German states until the second half of the 19th century.

The unification of Germany in and the adoption of the mark as the common currency put an end to the old units, just as the adoption of the Euro and the introduction of new notes and coins in put an end to the French franc, the German Deutschemark, Italian lire, Spanish peseta, and other European currencies. See the website for additional information about the history of money. Other printed sources were used, particularly in connection with dollar sign, and are mentioned below.

There are also links to the most important web sources used. While on the subject of currency unions, before the formation of the Scandinavian Currency Union in and the adoption of the krone or krona, the first being the Danish and Norwegian word for "Crown" and the second, the Swedish word each of the Scandinavian countries had their own version of the "daler" as their currency.

Like "dollar" the name "daler" came from "thaler" and provides a clue as to how the word evolved. The term "daler" was also used in Low German and Dutch. In Sweden dalers were minted from onwards, and in Denmark from As Denmark and Norway formed a united kingdom until the Napoleonic Wars, when Norway passed into Swedish rule, the two countries shared a common currency. Although Denmark, Norway and Sweden were neutral, World War I put a considerable strain on their economies too, and consequently the Scandinavian Currency Union was officially dissolved not long after, in The name daler or daalder was also used by the Dutch for the silver coins from the German states and for those that they started to mint themselves during the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule.

For about a century after the establishment of the Dutch Republic in The Netherlands enjoyed a golden age. It became the foremost maritime and economic power in the world. The Dutch East India Company controlled the spice trade and the Dutch also established a monopoly of trade with Japan. In North America Dutch colonisation started early in the 17th century.

The most important settlement, New Amsterdam, was renamed New York in shortly after its conquest by the English. Some Dutch coins were intended for internal use but others such as the leeuwendaalder, literally "lion daadler" had a higher intrinsic value and used to finance the country's booming international trade and circulated widely in different parts of the world.

It has been said that the Florentine florin and Venetian ducat were, because of their international importance, the dollars of the Middle Ages and Dutch currency became the dollar of the 17th century. In North America Dutch coins continued to be used in the formerly Dutch and other British colonies but were eventually replaced by coins minted in the Spanish colonies, and to a lesser extent Portuguese coins.

Interesting examples of the use of the word "dollar" in Britain long before the creation of the United States - in fact the English colonisation of North America had scarcely begun - can be found in two of Shakespeare's plays.

The last remark by Gonzalo was, of course, a pun since "dolour" is an old-fashioned word for pain or grief, like the modern Spanish word dolor, which also means pain.

Shakespeare's use of the word "dollar" in Macbeth was anachronistic since the real Macbeth probably died in the middle of the 11th century, nearly years before the first thalers were minted. Nevertheless the use of the word in Macbeth and the Tempest, both of which were first performed in about , is a clear indication that the term dollar was already in use in English before the the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for America in In addition to the treasures they melted down, the Spanish conquerors soon began to produce large quantities of silver from mines in Mexico and Peru.

Most important of all were the enormous reserves they discovered at Potosi in what is now Bolivia. Ships laden with silver regularly crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Those crossing the Atlantic were naturally bound for Spain.

Others sailed west across the Pacific to China to trade silver for Chinese goods. As the Spaniards controlled the sources of most of the world's silver their coins were widely accepted, especially in places like Britain's American colonies where silver was in short supply.

During colonial times the official British coinage was in short supply and as a result the a variety of substitutes was used in Britain's American colonies , including wampum, in some of the northern colonies, and tobacco, or more conveniently, certificates for tobacco deposited in public warehouses, in Virginia. The colonists also used whatever foreign coins they could obtain. At various times in different colonies paper money was issued and disputes with the British government over this were one of the causes of the American Revolution.

The rebels financed their war of independence largely by printing paper money notes that were called Continentals. By the end of the war, these had been rendered practically worthless by hyperinflation but financial prudence is a luxury in wartime.

The notes had served their purpose and, with the help of their French allies, the Americans won the war. As Spanish pesos or dollars had long been in wide circulation in North America, some of the paper money issued in some of the colonies before the war had been denominated in dollars. Other notes used British monetary units.

During the war too, some Continentals were denominated in British units, others in dollars. The goal of the system — which designated the Federal Reserve note as the new national currency — was to prevent banking panics and increase the use of the dollar worldwide.

Measuring 6. With a reverse side that lacked symbolism or any official government emblem , they earned the nickname "funnyback" among collectors.

The Great Seal, with its recognizable pyramid and eagle motifs, was not added to the dollar bill until at the suggestion of Henry A. Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt's agriculture secretary and eventual vice president. The motto first appeared on US coins during the Civil War to reflect a national increase in religious sentiment.

According to Dustin Johnston, director of currency at Heritage Auctions , consistency is key when it comes to anti-counterfeiting measures. The goal of the web-fed press was to prove that it could produce currency more quickly and cheaply than sheet-fed systems. Capable of printing both sides of a note in a single pass, it was able to generate 10, sheets in just 35 minutes.

With the sheet-fed system, it takes 72 hours for each side to be dried and cured. Ultimately, the web press was retired after four years since it couldn't handle sustained long printing runs, and the Bureau returned to the sheet-fed method. The yearly currency order for the fiscal year includes 2.

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It's believed that, in , the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued the first paper currency in America. Despite opposition from Great Britain, each of the 13 colonies had its own currency by the time of the American Revolution. Noted polymath Benjamin Franklin began printing paper money as early as and proposed a universal paper currency in When the Continental Congress needed a way to finance the Revolutionary War in , it began issuing notes called Continentals.

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