Any more data discovered to accurately determine what it means?
Hmmm…speculating here…
Analogizing from the pesos de ocho reals which became our dollar, is “cent” short for centavo del peso (de ocho reals) – 1% of the piece-of-eight (dollar) ?
–G?
Shave and a hair cut
one-quarter of a peso-de-ocho-reals!
…hmm, that kills the rhythm
No, because the then peso (or “piece of eight” or “[Spanish] dollar”) didn’t divide into 100 subunits. That was a US development.
[ul]
[li]10 mills = 1 cent[/li][li]10 cents = 1 dime (or “disme”)[/li][li]10 dimes = 1 [US] dollar[/li][li]10 dollars = 1 eagle[/li][/ul]
The peso was instead divided into eight reales, and the tradition of dividing the dollar into eight parts continued in the slang use of “bits” and in the stock-exchange practice of pricing in 1/8ths of a dollar, even though it hasn’t been possible to make 1/8 of a dollar in US currency since the half-cent was discontinued in 1857.
I bet people used the ¢ symbol because they were talking about cents and it was sort of a takeoff on the $ symbol. A dollar has a slash through it, so should the cents symbol. The big question is why does it appear after the amount and not before the amount like the dollar symbol does:
For example: $ 5.25
Versus: 25 ¢
It’s probably even more difficult to trace than the dollar symbol. Until advertising became popular, there would have been little printed use of the cents symbol. Most of the early printed uses of the dollar symbol is in official documents and newspaper notices.
It’s the same with English currency: (£5.25, 25p) [£ sterling, p pence]. If it preceded the US version, it could be because P25 might have been conflated with Pounds 25, then the format was continued? Just wildly guessing there though.
What you have there is post-decimalisation in 1971.
Prior to that, since medieval times the UK used pounds, shillings and pence. Lsd (from the latin libra, solidi, denarii) - or £sd.
The usual format would have been £5.4s.3d.
Thus that format was well established in the Old World way before the New World sorted its currency out. (“Pence” is short for “pennies” too, which is where that word comes from in the US.)
I was surprised to learn just now (via both wikipedia and dictionary.com) that pence is actually the plural of penny!
Edit: which is pretty much exactly what jjimm just said; I didn’t really read that right… But I was still surprised!
Can’t find anything about the history of the Spanish “céntimo” online - in particular when it was adopted in Spain as 1/100 of the peseta.
Though they’re both obviously from the Latin, I do wonder if the French revolutionary official adoption of “centime” in 1795 as 1/100 of a Franc may be responsible for the US dollar’s subdivisional nomenclature. (Not least because that would piss off a lot of people whose views I disagree with.)
The US cent was established no later than the Coinage Act of 1792.
In addition to this, the half cent was minted to make change for spanish dollars. It never really had much buying power, but merchants had to be able to convert a base 8 dollar into a base 10 dollar. So 12.5 cent increments were needed.
And I assume the word “cent” has the same root as centimeter, centigrade, etc.
Also, in regards to the original thread, it says "Bear in mind that the Spanish dollar, also known as the peso de 8 reales, was the principal coin in circulation in the U.S. up until 1794, when we began minting our own dollars. "
The Spanish dollar (and it’s fractional coins, I assume) was widely used long after that, until about the mid-1800s, alongside our dollar. The US Mint wasn’t minting nearly enough dollars or other coins to eliminate the need for foreign coinage for quite a while after it was created.
Did the Spaniards have a mint in the Americas, or did all those Spanish coins ultimately come from Spain itself?
Spain had a few mints in the Americas. The Mexico City mint is actually the longest operating mint in North America. It was created by Spain, and is still used by modern day Mexico. However (and I’m speculating here), I imagine very few coins made their way from there to the States, without hitting Spain first. The Spanish dollar (pieces of eight) was sort of the world standard currency at that time, as (some might say) the USD is the world currency today.
I’m speculating also, but I have no doubt that quite a bit of the Mexico City coinage, especially the fractional coinage, made it’s way into the US.
A huge portion of the dollar-sized 8 reales went to China.
I believe the dominance of the spanish dollar was caused by the huge deposits of silver discovered in Mexico and Peru - out of which spanish dollars were minted.
It was also due to British colonial policy, which preferred cash to go from the colonies to the homeland, and not the other way around. British small change had become reasonably common in the colonies, but pounds and guineas were hard to find. That’s why British small change (and wampum!) continued to be legal tender in the US until 1857.
On the other side of the ocean, by the way, “dollar” became common British slang for the crown (5-shilling piece, worth 25p in modern British coinage, but worth approximately a peso or a US dollar at the time.
Oh, for sure it probably made it’s way into the US. But, I don’t really think there were land trade routes between Mexico City and the US at the time. I imagine most of the coins hit Spain in the interim, or at least some Spanish areas in between, like Hispaniola, Cuba, or Florida or something.