Show DOLLAR TRACED TO PIECES OF EIGHT american currency since the days of 1792 in the fifteenth century the counts of in bohem a minted large silver coins from metal found in the divinity vivin ity of joa hims thal in that country these coins were known as Joachims thaler abbreviated to thaler in the low german this became daler and to the english dollar before the nineteenth century coins often circulated with little re gard for national boundaries some types of coins because of the quality of their manufacture came to be especially well known and to be ac cepter as an international standard the florin for instance first minted in ri florence orence in 1252 was later adopt ed as an austrian a dutch and an english coin it is in this same man ner that a little valley in the recesses of the bohemian mountains came to give its name to the monetary unit of pruss a before the es of the german empire other countries adopted dollars in their currency and the name was next applied to other coins of weight and fineness similar to the dollar the famous span sh piece of eight eight reals came to be called a dollar and this became the most widely circulated of all the early dollars it is the spanish p aces of eight which gave us our standard coin in the days of the spanish colonial cm em pire in america the spanish 1 dollar circulated as freely in the english colonies as tn in the spanish and became the principal med um of exchange throughout the western hemisphere the united states adopted its dol lar currency under the collage act of 1792 the united states wanted to be independent of great britain even in its currency and it turne I 1 to the spanish example rathel thai that the british and a decimal hysten was decided upon instead of the brit ish calculation of shilling and pence the span sh dollar had been divided into eight but that of the united states was divided into a hundred fractions cent being from latin and french words for hundred |