I don’t know if this is really true. Here in Mexico we have cash drawers made in the U.S., and of course they give Mexican bills (which have different colours and sizes). And some of them even have US dollar bills. Also, we have had different changes in our bills in the last decade, and nothing had to be changed to the ATM’s.
In fact, I think there are more advantages in having colour bills than the usual green dollar bill. As it has already been mentioned, you can easily tell them apart, they are harder to counterfeit, they look better (at least for me )… but I believe the psychological factor is really what drives the decision.
Has anybody noticed that the design on the “Georgia” Quarter , which supposedly looks like a peach, actually looks like somebody’s butt with a branch jammed up it?
Could this be an outraged practitioner of “alternative” sexual practices getting revenge on the state of Georgia for it’s somewhat narrow-minded laws on sodomy? Juuussstttt asking…
With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince. With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D, and you still have the frog you started with.
Waaah…there are some strangenesses being posted in the name of the Straight Dope here!
The “Spanish milled dollar” (English term) was the crown-size (i.e., silver dollar size) silver coin of the Spanish Empire, including everything south of Louisiana Territory except Brazil and a few islands and half-pint colonies. It was known to the Spanish as “ocho reales” or eight reals, because that was its value in Spanish money. Hence “pieces of eight” were coins worth 8 reales. IIRC, the arms on it, featuring a cross with something or other in saltire behind it, made it easy to split into halves, quarters, and eighths. These, worth 4, 2, and 1 real respectively, were known as the appropriate number of “bits” to the English. BTW, this was at a period when English coinage was being debased, and so the Spanish money was vastly preferable to the English coins.
Of the motley collection of money that circulated in ~1774 America, the only coin commonly known in all colonies which was not a British issue was the Spanish dollar. I am not sure exactly how it was first proposed as the U.S. currency base, but it got a strong consensus quite quickly (though not without some disagreement).
Maybe not, but they’d have to refit all of the vending machines (Especially if you decide to make larger bills).
Remember, they moved the prices of even candy in machines to be almost one dollar, and we didn’t really have a dollar coin before now. (The Suzie B.? Whatcha talkin’ 'bout, Willis?)
Don’t you forget (this can’t be stressed enough), we are very conservative and protective of our currency. There are still many of us recovering from the shock of seeing the new $100s and $50s which were released how many years ago now???
Back pocket does make it easier for pickpocketets too, but if you wear your wallet in your front pocket, your zipper gets pulled down. It’s wierd.
I have that problem when I wear my badge and pager clipped to the front of my pants. I sometimes wear my wallet in my front pocket now, but that’s cause I had to rig the zipper to keep it from slipping.
Well, maybe that’s not it, maybe it’s just me. Maybe the real reason is a fear of comments like.
“Is that a large wallet in your front pocket, or…”
has anyone ever heard of a ‘scotch purse?’
i bought one at an estate sale: half-moon zips around the curve, opens up to full-circle w/ 1/2 holding folded paper money, the other 1/2 holding i.d., and in between there lies a plastic coin holder, as though it were a page in a book-- flattened-out slanty-stacking the coins in four denominations–very clever and very practical, and i get remarks on it every time i’m at the checkout.
unfortunately, it’s an antique, so i guess most of us would be hard-pressed to find one on demand.
btw, the logo on the plastic part reads “Mayflower”
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the characters of the women on the coins.
Susan B. was a Quaker, a temperance lecturer, unmarried, and unknown to many americans when her coin was introduced.
Sac was a nubile young indian maiden, heading out for adventure with a bunch of men. She had a baby, she was strong and independent. She has her own mythology.
Bills were larger prior to 1928. That’s when notes of current size were introduced.
I don’t understand what a ‘punched card’ is/was. And how do you know that is why shirt pockets are that size?
ANd the new US small dollar coin will NOT fly. The US Mint/Treasury Department is currently on record as saying they have NO intention currently of withdrawing the US one dollar banknote. Until they do this, it will follow the fate of the SBA dollar coin introduced in 1979. Once the current hysterical demand for a new product subsides, bags of these will sit in Federal Reserve vaults
Why do I feel so old just because I know what a punched card is?
Sit down, sonny, and let me tell you about the good old days of computing. We didn’t have these fancy-schmancy microchips. We didn’t even have monitors. No, we had blinking lights. Computers used to take up whole rooms, and they had less computing power than the pocket calculator I keep in my wallet. We didn’t have these stupid “bugs” you have now, we had actual insects that crawled into the relays. And instead of typing programs in on a keyboard, we punched them onto cards mad of heavy paper, and fed the cards into the card reader.
Jesus.
A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.
Just so everyone knows I have four of the Sacajaweas and my family and myself are collecting the state quarters. We even have that little map. But what is up with the last silver dollar of the millenium…especially sense they are still selling them?
I learned how to ‘punch cards’ when I took PChem in 1965. So maybe I can out-Geezer you.
But JFK had written that punched cards were the size of the old money(pre-1937 to him, pre 1928 to me). And why, praytell, would your shirt pocket be the size of a bill. Not a likely place to keep your banknotes. I think his reply was just fuzzy thinking or a UL.
Haven’t you ever watched any old movies? Men (mainly blue collar) are always taking money from their shirt pockets.
That Herman Hollerith designed his original punched cards to be the same size as the then US currency is very well documented.
As to the date, I appear to have been wrong about 1937 (the date that remained unchanged on all $1 silver certificates for a generation). Curiously enough, the BEP web site wavers between 1928 and 1929.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
If it does fail does that mean in 50 years it’s going to be worth 100 dollars for each dollar Sacajawea coin that you have? Or will they still be worth one dollar?
If it does fail does that mean in 50 years it’s going to be worth 100 dollars for each dollar Sacajawea coin that you have? Or will they still be worth one dollar?
The “maxmon” website is the first place I’ve ever seen to suggest any doubt of the story, which doubt it ascribes only to “other sources”.
For the time being, I think I’ll stick with the official IBM histories and M.I.T. Press’s “IBM’s Early Computers”.
I should remark, though, that the story is attached to Hollerith’s first standard punched card, ca. 1905, when he made the move from dependence on the Census Bureau (which had started its own rival punched-card-machine manufacturer) to general commercial accounting. His earlier cards had other sizes.
Note that at this date, with many non-Treasury banknotes still in circulation, the money size was not precisely standardized, though an approximate common size was in use for convenience.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
)… but I believe the psychological factor is really what drives the decision.
