The American dollar ($) or US dollar (USD) is the form of money used in America. It is also widely used for world trade, banking and crime. In fact, most dollars are not in America but abroad.
The dollar is a green piece of paper money worth about 2 grams of silver. For most of the 1700s and 1800s it was a silver coin of about 25 grams.
In 2007 the dollar had a value of about 2.255 grams of silver. That makes it somewhat similar to Plato’s drachma, Cicero’s denarius, Shakespeare’s groat and Alice’s sixpence.
When you write a dollar amount you put a “$” before the number, as in $150.
A 100 cents make a dollar.
Here are the most common denominations:
Coins (made of cheap metal):
- $0.01 penny
- $0.05 nickel
- $0.10 dime
- $0.25 quarter
- $1.00 dollar
Notes (made of cloth-like paper): $1, $5, $10, $20.
Americans like to put eagles, women, Native Americans and dead presidents on their money.
A bit of history:
The first dollar appeared in Bohemia in 1517. It was a large silver coin called a Joachimsthaler – or thaler for short – because it came from a mine in Joachimsthal. Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, appeared on the coin. In Dutch “thaler” became “dollar”, and so it did in French and English.
Later in the 1500s when the Spanish conquered Mexico and Peru, they turned the silver they found into coins of a similar size called the Spanish dollar or “pieces of eight” – famous in America as pirate money. You could cut it into eight pieces, each with a value of one Spanish real. That is why a quarter is called “two bits” and prices on the New York Stock Exchange were quoted in eighths of a dollar till 2001.
By the 1700s the Spanish dollar was used throughout North and South America and East Asia. Present-day dollars, pesos and yuans all grew out of the old Spanish dollar.
The Spanish dollar had 25.56 grams of silver. In 1792 the American government began to make American dollars, which had a little less silver, 24.056 grams.
American prices changed little from 1635 to 1892, in part because even paper dollars could be turned into a fixed amount of silver or gold. The chief exception was during the civil war in the early 1860s when the government began printing money outright. The dollar lost half of its value, but after the war it recovered.
In the 1900s America changed over to paper money and the value of the dollar has been all over the place. It could still be changed into silver or gold at set rates for overseas trade, but even that ended in 1971 when the American government printed money to pay back its debts from the Vietnam War. In the 13 years that followed the dollar lost three-quarters of its value.
The value of the dollar in grams of silver:
By decade:
- 1800: 24.05
- 1810: 24.05
- 1820: 24.05
- 1830: 24.05
- 1840: 24.00
- 1850: 24.07
- 1860: 24.07
- 1870: 21.75
- 1880: 27.87
- 1890: 29.45
- 1900: 48.00
- 1910: 56.25
- 1920: 47.94
- 1930: 94.25
- 1940: 89.38
- 1950: 38.88
- 1960: 34.03
- 1970: 19.02
- 1980: 1.90
- 1990: 7.65
- 2000: 6.28
- 2010: 1.54
- 2020: 1.51
By year:
- 2000: 6.283
- 2001: 7.117
- 2002: 6.762
- 2003: 6.379
- 2004: 4.662
- 2005: 4.251
- 2006: 2.694
- 2007: 2.324
- 2008: 2.075
- 2009: 2.120
- 2010: 1.540
- 2011: 0.886
- 2012: 0.999
- 2013: 1.307
- 2014: 1.630
- 2015: 1.984
- 2016: 1.814
- 2017: 1.825
- 2018: 1.980
- 2019: 1.919
- 2020: 1.514
- 2021: 1.184 (July 1st)
The crowns that I sometimes use for historical prices on this blog are 30 grams of silver – a bit more than what the dollar was in the 1700s, 1800s and again in the 1960s.
– Abagond, 2007, 2021.
See also:
The Canadian dollar has been wavering around 98 cents to the American. It is forecast to stay almost on par for the next while, if not going over. Shopping up! I plan on keeping the American economy going!
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That is funny, Herneith
Ill tell you, its bad. Since Bush took office and decided to invade Iraq, the dollar started a steady decline it just hasnt pulled out of.
Ive been trying to tell people for years that this steady decline could only lead to something horrible.
You dont have to have the strongest currancie on the market, but, steady decline only means something is weakening in the economy.
What people in America dont realise is that as the money gets weaker, everything they earn or own in dollars looses value.
Some people will tell you “oh its good for exports”. That is just a quick fix that could only lead to higher prices for the average citizen as the value they earn has to pay more for the basics.
ive seen this close up in Brazil when their money used to decline horribly and lost some value almost daily. In the USA its happening more slowly , but, it is for real.
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Interesting factoids on the “$”. You could also include the many ways they have redesigned them (portraits, color schemes, etc.). I’ve just gotten used to plastic, so I rarely use paper currency…
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