Pounds VS Dollars张梓恒陈苏婉

Dollar is the name of more than twenty currencies, including (ordered by population) those of the United States,Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Liberia, Jamaica and Namibia. Origins of the dollar sign: The sign is first attested in business correspondence in the 1770s as a scribal abbreviation "ps", referring to the Spanish American peso,that is, the "Spanish dollar" as it was known in British North America. These late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century manuscripts show that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to the "$" mark, and this new symbol was retained to refer to the American dollar as well, once this currency was adopted in 1785 by the United States. On April 2, 1792, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of silver found in Spanish dollar coins in common use in the states. As a result, the United States dollar was defined as a unit of pure silver. Usage in the United Kingdom: In 1804, a British five-shilling piece, or crown, was sometimes called "dollar". It was an overstruck Spanish eight real coin, the original of which was known as a Spanish dollar. Large numbers of these eight-real coins were captured during the Napoleonic Wars, hence their re-use by the Bank of England. They remained in use until 1811.During World War II, when the U.S. dollar was valued at five shillings, the half crown became nicknamed a "half dollar" by U.S. personnel in the UK. Pounds The English word pound is cognate with among German Pfund,Dutch pond and Swedish pund.All ultimately derive from a borrowing Latin expression.It first refer to Unit of mass or weight.The currency’s symbol is a stylished representation of letter L,standing for liver or lira. Today what we talk most is the British Pound.The origin dates back to 760 during the regin of Mercia King offa intreduced the silver penny which became the standard coin .In 1158,KIng Henry II introduced new coinage stuck from 92.5% silver.In 1694 King William III established the bank of England and paper money was introduced in this year.Soon the legal basis changed to gold.The UK suspended the gold standard in1924,brewing to the necessaries of war.Then the dollar’s growing dominance began to reduce sterling’s importance.The Bretton wods conference in1944 heralded the end of sterling’s predominance in international trade and the triumph of the American dollar.Because traded in the free market,the British pound is always one of the highest value currencies in the wold.