4 ms·

And now five cents is a nickel, two nickels are a dime, five nickels a quarter, four quarters a dollar, a hundred dollars a benjamin, ten benjamins a grand, etc

And now five cents is a nickel, two nickels are a dime, five nickels a quarter, four quarters a dollar, a hundred dollars a benjamin, ten benjamins a grand, etc. Like now, most of that is nicknames and people didn’t use them in combinations. For reference, the actual currency was pounds, shillings and pence. Ratios of 1, 1/20, and 1/12 respectively. In modern decimal London, 20 pounds is a pony and 100 is a ton. We still have the colorful shorthand.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Yeah US money was on the old "another coin for every doubling". But base-ten doesn't admit to that very well. So we used 1-2-5-10-20-50. We had 1 penny, 2 penny (gone), nickle, dime, quarter(? where is the 20-cent piece?), 50-cent-piece (no name for this?), dollar, two-dollar (gone, then back, then gone again), $10, $20, $50, $100
- howard941 8y ago
  > 50-cent-piece (no name for this?) That's a half-dollar Unrelated to your post is two bits == quarter, if memory serves me it's by way if Spain.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    Your memory serves... Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Spanish real, pieces of eight. Two bits == two pieces == one quarter.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      From when you would literally cut up the single coin into bits to use for smaller payments.
      - dredmorbius 8y ago
        I'm not finding aany substantiation of that. The coin was actually 8 reals, not 1 real as I'd indicated above. Also known as a peso or Spanish dollar. Peso: "a weight" https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso
        njarboe 8y ago
        You are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would guess and this site states that they did get cut up from time to time to make change[1]. [1]https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3...
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JoeAltmaier 8y ago

Yeah US money was on the old "another coin for every doubling". But base-ten doesn't admit to that very well. So we used 1-2-5-10-20-50. We had 1 penny, 2 penny (gone), nickle, dime, quarter(? where is the 20-cent piece?), 50-cent-piece (no name for this?), dollar, two-dollar (gone, then back, then gone again), $10, $20, $50, $100

howard941 8y ago
> 50-cent-piece (no name for this?) That's a half-dollar Unrelated to your post is two bits == quarter, if memory serves me it's by way if Spain.
- 0x445442 8y ago
  Your memory serves... Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Spanish real, pieces of eight. Two bits == two pieces == one quarter.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    From when you would literally cut up the single coin into bits to use for smaller payments.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      I'm not finding aany substantiation of that. The coin was actually 8 reals, not 1 real as I'd indicated above. Also known as a peso or Spanish dollar. Peso: "a weight" https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso https://www.etymonline.com/word/peso
      - njarboe 8y ago
        You are right. "pieces of eight" seems to come from the phrase pieces of eight reals, with the real being the Spanish unit of silver money. Although I would guess and this site states that they did get cut up from time to time to make change[1]. [1]https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3/march05/iotm.cfm https://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume3...

deleted 8y ago

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