Short Stuff: Currency Symbols

The dollar sign, it turns out, started as a P with an S written over it. That's the leading theory, anyway: Spanish merchants abbreviating "peso" as "PS" eventually compressed the P into a vertical stroke, and the S stayed. The first printed dollar sign appeared sometime after 1800. The double-stroke version that most people learned to draw in elementary school? Ayn Rand once claimed it was actually an S superimposed over a U—standing for United States—with the bottom of the U lopped off. "Good try, Ayn Rand," Josh says. "P.S. you just made that up." In reality, two vertical lines through a symbol is a recurring pattern across many currencies, not a secret patriotic code.

The peso's long shadow

The United States modeled its dollar on the Spanish peso de ocho—pieces of eight—which had been circulating since the 1400s. That's why twenty countries today use the dollar sign, from Namibia to New Zealand. To tell them apart, you add the country code: US dollar, CA for Canadian dollar, and so on. Chuck notes approvingly that Canada abandoned the pound for the dollar. "Way to go, Canada."

The euro's anonymous designer