TIDBITS 04/03/05

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The Sign of the Dollar

There is a belief that says that the dollar sign with two
vertical lines going through the "S" is a quickly scribbled
and superimposed U over an S ... short for U.S. This is
a quaint and endearing notion ... and like many a quaint
and endearing notions ... it is wrong.

Then there is the belief that the dollar sign derives from
the figure 8 representing the Spanish piece of eight. Alas,
this too--although it seems to make sense--is erroneous.

How many wrongs--you may well ask--does one have to navigate
through in order to arrive at a right? No more lads and lassies.
For here is how the dollar sign came to be:

It derives from the Spanish peso. The peso begins with the
letter P and the plural-pesos--would be initialized with a
P followed by an S. This was at one time written as "ps" and
later written as a P with a superscript S. Now ... write
this nice and slow and it all works fine. However ... speed things
up a bit ... and it all becomes a tad muddled ... and the
two letters begin to superimpose themselves one over the other
.... and the P loses its curve and the whole thing begins to look
like the dollar sign we all know and love today. No great U.S.
symbolism here folks ... just sloppy handwriting to depict the
plural of peso. Another grand fancy dashed to smithereens in
the cold light of reality.

Then-of course-there's the question of how the word Dollar came
into being. Alas and alack ... this too is not American in origin.
It's Dutch or Low German ... from the word Daler (Taler in German)
a word used to describe a coin from the silver mines of Joachimstal,
in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) which dates back to the
early 1500's.

All this of course is by way of an insanely clever lead-in to a pair
of dollar-sign cufflinks with pavé diamonds.


For those of you who are new to this thing called
Tidbits...may I direct you to my home page at www.tyler-adam.com where
you will scroll down the left side menu till you get to the area that
says Tidbits Graphics ... and then click on the link that says: Dollar
.... in order to view the cufflinks with the diamonds.

And there ya have it.
That's it for this week folks.
Catch you all next week.
Benjamin Mark

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