Who invented currency symbols? For instance where do the dollar $ and pound £ signs originate?
Cecil Adams on the $ sign:
From an 1875 Scribner’s Magazine column:
“The dollar mark $ is a combination of the letters f and s, the Spanish fuertes or hard, to distinguish them from paper money. Even among ourselves we frequently hear the term ‘hard dollars,’ so that it is a monogram composed of the first and last letters of the word. Occasionally the calculator abbreviated it thus; fs.; but that interfering with the signs for francs and florins, he curled the s around the f, which preserves the distinction.”
challenging Cecil with your first post?
rather bold.