hi I'm Craig I have a tattoo of a dollar
sign on my knee so I can call it my
money knee and this is Mental Floss on
YouTube today I'm gonna answer for under
brawls big question where does the
dollar sign come from I have to start by
saying that unfortunately we don't know
where the dollar sign came from but
today I'm gonna tell you the most
popular and widely accepted theory let's
get started
cha-ching
this theory comes from mathematician
Florian kajori who published his
findings in the 1928 book a history of
mathematical notations which I'm sure is
a great light reading in order to
properly explain kajoor his research I'm
also going to give you a little history
of where the usdollar came from as you
probably know the US Constitution gave
Congress the right to coin money so in
the late 1700s the US began coining its
own dollars based on the Spanish dollar
and they were coins paper dollars didn't
exist until 1861 because instead of
making it rain they had to make it hail
and that was dangerous the Spanish
dollar also known as the peso had
already been around since the mid 1500s
funfact peso is Spanish for wait but the
US colonists got their word dollar from
the European currency called Fowler
anyway Spanish Americans began
abbreviating peso in various ways in the
sixteenth century one popular
abbreviation PS evolved into the letters
P and s getting kind of squished
together into a new symbol the symbol
changed to the dollar sign that we know
today
according to kajori that's probably just
because it's easier to write it without
the extra loop so in addition to
borrowing the Spanish dollar people from
the US probably borrowed the
abbreviation from the Spanish Americans
or to abbreviate the spanic and so when
did all of this happen
well Kaduri had a pretty good idea
thanks to the diary of a member of the
New York Provincial Assembly in the
1770s in the diary from June 10th 1776
through August 20th the word dollar is
spelled out but on August 21st 1776 he
uses the dollar symbol for the first
time of course it's not like everyone
started using the dollar sign on August
21st of 1776 but that shows a good time
frame for when the symbol was becoming
more common and by the 1800s the dollar
sign was pretty standard I even use it
today it's a good theory of where the
dollar sign originated but there are
plenty more like it some believe that
the sign came from the letters U and s
as in United States that makes sense
considering the dollar sign looks like a
u on top of an S minus the bottom of the
U does that make sense I don't some
people believe that it's a un s but that
it stands for a unit of silver rather
than United States another theory is
that the sign comes from a slash through
an 8 because peso is known as peso de
Ocho or piece of 8 all of these theories
are valid and so is my theory that the
dollar sign was designed based on a
snake going down a fireman's pole if you
have a big question that you'd like
answered leave it below in the comments
thanks for watching Mental Floss on
YouTube looking forward to spending time
with you next week
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