# "Dollars" in Victorian England?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 29, 2019, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636 "2019-01-29T21:06:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2019, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/61 "2019-02-10T02:54:22Z")

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> [@Aspidistra](#):
>
> So the US monetary system is an interesting hybrid. It’s based on a lovely regular decimal system, just like the French had been pioneering. But they were clearly still thinking in an Imperial kind of way - a quarter is a quarter because it’s fundamental identity is ‘a quarter of the next biggest unit’ - it only accidentally happens to be equal to 25 cents. If the designers had been thinking of it as ‘a number of cents added together’ they probably would have made it 20, not 25

Sort of related to that, although we talk about “dollars and cents”, U.S. money is legally defined as

> [@](#):
>
> United States money is expressed in dollars, dimes or tenths, cents or hundreths\*, and mills or thousandths. A dime is a tenth of a dollar, a cent is a hundredth of a dollar, and a mill is a thousandth of a dollar.

([31 U.S. Code § 5101](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5101))

In the British system that was replaced after the Revolution, money was expressed in pounds, shillings, and pence; you wouldn’t say something cost “one pound forty-two pence”, but rather “one pound, three shillings and sixpence”. I suspect that, in spite of decimalization, there was some intent or expectation of a similar system with American money: “One dollar, one dime and eight cents”. Of course nothing like that ever caught on (we say “One dollar and eighteen cents”) but to this day, an American dime doesn’t have the words “TEN CENTS” on it; it is formally labelled as “ONE DIME”. (A “nickel” on the other hand is formally labelled as “FIVE CENTS”. There were “[half dimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NNC-US-1873-5C-Seated_Liberty_(legend).jpg)”, made of silver, up until the late 19th century.)

\*There is evidently a typo in the U.S. Code; it apparently actually says “hundreths”. Therefore I don’t have to pay income tax!!!

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**Author:** ![zombywoof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/9e8a1a/32.png) [@zombywoof](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zombywoof)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2019, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dollars-in-victorian-england/828636/62 "2019-02-10T03:38:21Z")

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> [@terentii](#):
>
> Has the American government given any rationale as to why they’re hanging on to the penny?

Lobbying by the zinc coin blank industry.

> **[Don’t mess with the penny lobby](https://fortune.com/2012/04/11/dont-mess-with-the-penny-lobby/)**
>
> The chorus arguing America should scrap the 1-cent coin has grown. Here's why it might never go away.

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