THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



DECEMBER, 1912 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE DOLLAR MARK 



By Professor FLORIAN CAJORI 



COLORADO COLLEGE 



THERE are few mathematical symbols the origin of which has 

 given rise to more unrestrained speculation and less real scien- 

 tific study than has our dollar mark, $. About a dozen different the- 

 ories have been advanced by men of imaginative minds, but not one of 

 these would-be historians permitted himself to be hampered by the 

 underlying facts. These speculators have dwelt with special fondness 

 upon monogrammatic forms, some of which, it must be admitted, main- 

 tain considerable antecedent probability. Breathes there an American 

 with soul so dead that he has not been thrilled with patriotic fervor 

 over the " U. S. theory " which ascribes the origin of the $ mark to 

 the superposition of the letters U and S? This view of its origin is 

 the more pleasing because it makes the symbol a strictly American 

 product, without foreign parentage, apparently as much the result of 

 a conscious effort or an act of invention as is the sewing machine or 

 the cotton gin. If such were the case, surely some traces of the time 

 and place of invention should be traceable ; there ought to be the usual 

 rival claimants. As a matter of fact no one has ever advanced real 

 evidence in the form of old manuscripts, or connected the symbol with 

 a particular place or individual. Nor have our own somewhat exten- 

 sive researches yielded evidence in support of the "US theory." The 

 theory that the $ is an entwined U and S, where U S may mean 

 "United States" or one "Uncle Sam," was quoted in 1876 from an 

 old newspaper clipping in the Notes and Queries (London) i 1 it is 

 given in cyclopedic references. In the absence of even a trace of evi- 

 dence from old manuscripts, this explanation must give way to others 

 which, as we shall find, rest upon a strong basis of fact. Possibly these 



1 Notes and Queries, 5th S., Vol. 6, London, 1876, p. 386; Vol. 7, p. 98. 



VOL. LXXXI. — 36. 



