Make Peace with the Sign

Get it off your back

When you need money, the dollar sign is your constant companion. It follows you everywhere. It fills your mail box, calls you on the phone, and makes demands. It even wakes you up in the middle of the night. It cheats you at the gas pump, shocks you at the grocery store, and gets a good laugh when you look at the price tag on a new pair of shoes. Why not get this persistent symbol off your back with a quick payday loan? Then relax for a minute and consider where it may have come from.

The dispute rages on (in limited circles)

Thomas Jefferson

The origin of the dollar sign is a matter of controversy for anyone interested in numismatics, the study of coins and paper money. The first use of $ in an American context is in 1784 in a memorandum from Thomas Jefferson suggesting the dollar as the primary unit of currency. Some have deduced from this that he made it up there and then, either as a monogram based on his own initials or as a kind of doodle.

Ayn Rand

A more widely held notion is that it originated as the letters U and S superimposed on each other and that the U eventually disintegrated into unconnected parallel lines. The problem with this theory (popularized by novelist Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged) is that $ as a symbol for peso far outdates its application to U.S. dollars and is still widely used as a peso sign throughout Latin America. ... click here to read the rest of the article titled "Make Peace with the Sign"