$
HOW THE
71
SIGN CAME
TO BE ABOUT
Learn the reason behind choosing the globally renowned $ symbol for the dollar
as the first global currency symbol.
Few of us pay attention to the dollar sign which is sometimes written using
one vertical line through the "S" while at other ties using two vertical lines. The
letter S appears nowhere in the word “dollar”, yet an S with a line through it is
unmistakably the dollar sign.
The explanation is simple. When the federal bank issued the first dollar note the
letters US were not printed however the words United States were. But the two
letters "U" and "S" had not been used as an abbreviation as such.
According to some the dollar sign written with two downward slashes instead of
one came from the initials of the United States: A capital "U" superimposed over
a capital "S", minus the lower part of the "U" which in time came to be removed
completely.
S S $