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43-508: In December 1999 it was valued at $ 170 million, and in the summer of 2000 it was named as the Sunday Times's #1 web company at the same time it ran the website for Euro 2000 . In the summer of 2000 Hersov was weeks away from selling the company to Vivendi Universal for £270m when market sentiment changed and the talks collapsed. Despite this, The Sunday Times named Sportal the No.1 e-business in

86-548: A Cologne Mark or 25.984 g fine), and fixed at 68 kreuzer . The new coin was popularly accepted but at a higher value of 72 kreuzer or 1.2 Gulden. It consequently doomed the (now-overvalued) gulden coin. Reichsthalers prevailed as circulating coin, and the gulden again became an uncoined currency unit equivalent to 25.984/1.2 = 21.653 g fine silver. This Reichsthaler specie or coin would continue to be divided into 24 groschen but would rise in value vs currency at 1.5 Gulden or 90 kreuzer by 1615. The Dutch adopted it as

129-625: A Cologne Mark. The Zinnaische currency standard of 1667 was the first to define the North German thaler , de jure , as a currency unit worth less than the Reichsthaler specie . The succeeding Leipzig standard of 1690 then became the prevailing thaler and gulden currencies throughout the Holy Roman Empire . A summary of the thaler standards, in brief: All North German thalers and Vereinsthalers were retired after 1873 in favor of

172-527: A collection of currency systems loosely related to the Frankish Carolingian monetary system with one pound (later Gulden) equal to 20 shillings (later Groschen ), and a shilling equal to 12 pennies ( Pfennig ). Many feudal rulers claimed the right to issue their own currency in their own domains, and often debased them in moments of stringency. Developments in the French livre currency system influenced

215-993: A common history with other dollars. Many of these currencies adopted the name after moving from a £sd -based to a decimalized monetary system. Examples include the Australian dollar , the New Zealand dollar , the Jamaican dollar , the Cayman Islands dollar , the Fiji dollar , the Namibian dollar , the Rhodesian dollar , the Zimbabwe dollar , and the Solomon Islands dollar . Reichsthaler The Reichsthaler ( German: [ˈʁaɪçsˌtaːlɐ] ; modern spelling Reichstaler ), or more specifically

258-687: A similar silver coin which then became the Joachimsthaler. The Joachimsthaler of the 16th century was succeeded by the longer-lived Reichsthaler of the Holy Roman Empire , used from the 16th to 19th centuries. The Netherlands also introduced its own dollars in the 16th century: the Burgundian Cross Thaler ( Bourgondrische Kruisdaalder ), the German-inspired Rijksdaalder , and the Dutch lion dollar ( leeuwendaalder ). The latter coin

301-663: A troy pound (373.24). There are two quotes in the plays of William Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. Coins known as "thistle dollars" were in use in Scotland during the 16th and 17th centuries, and use of the English word, and perhaps even the use of the coin, may have begun at the University of St Andrews . This might be supported by a reference to the sum of "ten thousand dollars" in Macbeth (act I, scene II) (an anachronism because

344-562: A uniform currency standard for the states of the Holy Roman Empire . Below is a history (in terms of grams of silver) of the Reichsthaler specie and its predecessor, the Guldengroschen ; as well as the Gulden currency unit used before 1618. The history of the lower-valued thaler currency unit is continued under North German thaler . Since the Holy Roman Empire was a loose federation of hundreds of feudal and princely rulers, Germany had

387-576: A well-known merchant and deemed genuine. Prior to 1873, the silver dollar circulated in many parts of the world, with a value in relation to the British gold sovereign of roughly $ 1 = 4s 2d (21p approx). As a result of the decision of the German Empire to stop minting silver thaler coins in 1871, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War , the worldwide price of silver began to fall. This resulted in

430-678: Is the dollar sign $ in the same way as many countries using peso currencies. The name "dollar" originates from Bohemia and a 29 g silver-coin called the Joachimsthaler . (Alongside the Singapore dollar ) (SGD) (Alongside the Brunei dollar ) (BND) On 15 January 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began minting coins from silver mined locally in Joachimsthal and marked on reverse with

473-452: Is very close to the geometric mean of one troy pound and one pennyweight . In what follows, "dollar" will be used as a unit of mass. A troy pound being 5760 grains and a pennyweight being 240 times smaller, or 24 grains, the geometric mean is, to the nearest hundredth, 371.81 grains. This means that the ratio of a pound to a dollar (15.52) roughly equals the ratio of a dollar to a pennyweight (15.47). These ratios are also very close to

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516-524: The rijksdaalder with 25.40 g fine silver and valued at 2.5 Dutch guilders as of 1618. The Thirty Years' War 1618-48 and the Kipper und Wipper financial crisis of 1618-23 led to widespread currency debasements of up to 10 gulden to a Reichsthaler specie. It destroyed the financial system created during the Reichsmünzordnung era as well as Empire's centralized authority over the states. After 1630

559-521: The Bohemian lion . The coins would be named Joachimsthaler after the town, becoming shortened in common usage to thaler or taler . The town itself derived its name from Saint Joachim , coupled with the German word Thal ( Tal in modern spelling), which means 'valley' ( cf. the English term dale ). This name found its way into other languages, for example: In contrast to other languages which adopted

602-580: The German gold mark , with each mark containing 100 ⁄ 279 gram of fine gold, at the rate of 1 thaler = 3 marks, or a gold ratio of 15.5. The Reichsthaler specie was widely issued in Germany for 200 years but was discontinued in many states after 1754 in favor of the lighter Conventionsthaler of 1 ⁄ 10 th a Cologne Mark or 23.3856 g fine silver. However it survived both as coin and bank money in several Northern European states until they adopted

645-483: The Reichsthaler specie , was a standard thaler silver coin introduced by the Holy Roman Empire in 1566 for use in all German states, minted in various versions for the next 300 years, and containing 25–26 grams fine silver. Reichsthaler was also the name of a currency unit worth less than the Reichsthaler specie introduced by several North German states from the 17th century; discussed separately under North German thaler . Several old books confusingly use

688-667: The gold standard in 1875. In 1583 the Dutch rijksdaalder coin of 25.40 g fine silver was the counterpart of the reichsthaler in the Dutch Republic . From 1608 to 1659 it then functioned as bank money of the Bank of Amsterdam ( Amsterdam Wisselbank ), worth 2.5 gulden banco and representing 25.40 g fine silver actually received. From 1659 to 1800 the bank money was redefined as the Silver Dukat of 24.36 g fine silver worth 2.4 gulden banco, which

731-713: 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. By the time of the American Revolution , the Spanish dólar gained significance because they backed paper money authorized by the individual colonies and the Continental Congress . Because Britain deliberately withheld hard currency from the American colonies, virtually all

774-473: The 16th century, and was a natural choice of unit for a unified German currency. The Reichsmünzordnung were a series of minting ordinances of the Holy Roman Empire defining the monetary system that would unify the numerous disparate currencies of its member states. The ordinance of 1524 defined two coins of equal value to the Reichsgulden currency. This remained an ideal or unimplemented system until

817-469: The 19th and early 20th centuries led several countries, notably the United Kingdom, United States and Japan , to mint trade dollars , which were often of slightly different weights from comparable domestic coinage. Silver dollars reaching China (whether Spanish, trade, or other) were often stamped with Chinese characters known as " chop marks ", which indicated that that particular coin had been assayed by

860-637: The New World and in the Philippines . The sign is first attested in business correspondence in the 1770s as a scribal abbreviation "p ", referring to the Spanish American peso , that is, the "Spanish dollar" as it was known in British North America. These late 18th- and early 19th-century manuscripts show that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing a close equivalent to

903-628: The Treasury] shall sell silver under conditions the Secretary considers appropriate for at least $ 1.292929292 a fine troy ounce." Silver was mostly removed from U.S. coinage by 1965 and the dollar became a free-floating fiat money without a commodity backing defined in terms of real gold or silver. The US Mint continues to make silver $ 1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation. The quantity of silver chosen in 1792 to correspond to one dollar, namely, 371.25 grains of pure silver,

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946-574: The U.S. Coinage Act (1873) which put the United States onto a ' de facto ' gold standard. Canada and Newfoundland were already on the gold standard, and the result was that the value of the dollar in North America increased in relation to silver dollars being used elsewhere, particularly Latin America and the Far East . By 1900 , value of silver dollars had fallen to 50 percent of gold dollars. Following

989-529: The UK and it came out top in an e-league compiled by the web consultancy, Bathwick. But as the dot.com bubble burst, Sportal's size and lack of strong income streams quickly started to cause problems. By March 2001 the company was in trouble and two rounds of redundancies saw two thirds of the staff laid off and savage spending cuts implemented. In April Hersov admitted Sportal was on the verge of closure if it did not secure more funding. Hersov injected his own money to keep

1032-591: The abandonment of the gold standard by Canada in 1931, the Canadian dollar began to drift away from parity with the U.S. dollar. It returned to parity a few times, but since the end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates that was agreed to in 1944, the Canadian dollar has been floating against the U.S. dollar. The silver dollars of Latin America and South East Asia began to diverge from each other as well during

1075-591: The company afloat but even that did not arrest the slide. In November 2001, UKbetting bought Sportal's domain names and trademark for £1 - marking the end of Sportal as a consumer website. It paid another £190,000 for the company's technology and took on two of Sportal's remaining 70 staff. The brand initially continued as sports content site then in 2002 relaunched the brand as a multi-sports broadband video portal sportal.com. In 2008, Sportal also opened its office in Mumbai and their Indian-centric website, www.sportal.co.in,

1118-586: The course of the 20th century. The Straits dollar adopted a gold exchange standard in 1906 after it had been forced to rise in value against other silver dollars in the region. Hence, by 1935, when China and Hong Kong came off the silver standard , the Straits dollar was worth 2s 4d (11.5p approx) sterling , whereas the Hong Kong dollar was worth only 1s 3d sterling (6p approx). The term "dollar" has also been adopted by other countries for currencies which do not share

1161-484: The different North German states reconstructed their currency systems with a Thaler worth 24 gutegroschen or 1 1 ⁄ 2 gulden , but little is on record with regard to the mint systems until after 1667. They were thus on a de facto thaler currency unit with some uncertainty in its value versus the Reichsthaler specie . A currency trial done in 1665 indicated a lower prevailing (and unofficial) rate of 14 1 ⁄ 4 gulden or 9 1 ⁄ 2 thaler to

1204-450: The dollar coin, such that a half-dollar was to contain half as much silver as a dollar, quarter-dollars would contain one-fourth as much, and so on. In an act passed in January 1837, the dollar's weight was reduced to 412.5 grains and alloy at 90% silver, resulting in the same fine silver content of 371.25 grains. On 21 February 1853, the quantity of silver in the lesser coins was reduced, with

1247-512: The effect that their denominations no longer represented their silver content relative to dollar coins. Various acts have subsequently been passed affecting the amount and type of metal in U.S. coins, so that today there is no legal definition of the term "dollar" to be found in U.S. statute. Currently the closest thing to a definition is found in United States Code Title 31, Section 5116, paragraph b, subsection 2: "The Secretary [of

1290-428: The evolution of the German currencies. The French denier led to the pfennig in the 9th century. France's 1-shilling gros tournois then became the groschen in the 13th century. Finally, the ounce-sized French livre & Dutch guilder of the 15th century helped define Germany's ounce-sized Guldengroschen and its subdivisions. The Guldengroschen was a large silver coin of approximately 30 grams minted from

1333-442: The following changes were made in 1555: The Reichsthaler turned out to be the most successful coin resulting from the 16th century Reichsmünzordnungs . It was borne out of an ordinance in 1559 discontinuing the 72-kreuzer guldengroschen and proposing in its place a smaller 60-kreuzer gulden coin. Popular demand for a replacement to the ounce-sized coin resulted in the Reichsthaler , 1 ounce silver of 8/9 fineness (hence, 9 to

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1376-403: The gold to silver ratio be exactly 15.5. Then a pennyweight of gold, that is 24 grains of gold, is nearly equal in value to a dollar of silver (1 dwt of gold = $ 1.002 of silver). Second, a dollar of gold is nearly equal in value to a pound of silver ($ 1 of gold = 5754 3/8 grains of silver = 0.999 Lb of silver). Third, the number of grains in a dollar (371.25) roughly equals the number of grams in

1419-514: The mine output of nations located southeast of modern-day Germany . The coin's name denotes its approximate equivalence to the Dutch guilder and French livre parisis of the 15th century, then worth around 1 ounce of silver or 2.6 grams gold. Though initially of varying weights and even facing competition from the Joachimsthaler , it was a coin that succeeded in the era of abundant precious metals in

1462-674: The non-token coinage in circulation was Spanish (and to a much lesser extent French and Dutch) silver, obtained via illegal but widespread commerce with the West Indies. Common in the Thirteen Colonies, Spanish dólar were even legal tender in one colony, Virginia . On 2 April 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

1505-483: 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 (approximately) valued at five shillings, the half crown (2s 6d) acquired the nickname "half dollar" or "half a dollar" in the UK. Chinese demand for silver in

1548-431: The ratio of a gram to a grain: 15.43. Finally, in the United States, the ratio of the value of gold to the value of silver in the period from 1792 to 1873 averaged to about 15.5, being 15 from 1792 to 1834 and around 16 from 1834 to 1873. This is also nearly the value of the gold to silver ratio determined by Isaac Newton in 1717. That these three ratios are all approximately equal has some interesting consequences. Let

1591-569: The real Macbeth , upon whom the play was based, lived in the 11th century). In the Sherlock Holmes story " The Man with the Twisted Lip " by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , published in 1891, an Englishman posing as a London beggar describes the shillings and pounds he collected as dollars. In 1804, a British five- shilling piece, or crown , was sometimes called "dollar". It was an overstruck Spanish eight real coin (the famous " piece of eight "),

1634-517: The same term Reichsthaler for the specie silver coin as well as the currency unit. This is disambiguated by referring to the full-valued coin as the Reichsthaler specie and the lower-valued currency unit as the Reichsthaler currency (courant, kurant) . The Reichsthaler – literally, the dollar of the realm – was the most successful standard silver coin resulting from the 1524–1559 Reichsmünzordnungen or 'imperial minting ordinances' defining

1677-498: The second part of word joachimsthaler , the first part found its way into Russian language and became efimok  [ ru ] , yefimok (ефимок). The predecessor of the Joachimsthaler was the Guldengroschen or Guldiner which was a large silver coin originally minted in Tirol in 1486, but which was introduced into the Duchy of Saxony in 1500. The King of Bohemia wanted

1720-508: The states. As a result, the United States dollar was defined as a unit of pure silver weighing 371 4/16th grains (24.057 grams), or 416 grains of standard silver (standard silver being defined as 371.25/416 in silver, and balance in alloy). It was specified that the "money of account" of the United States should be expressed in those same "dollars" or parts thereof. Additionally, all lesser-denomination coins were defined as percentages of

1763-468: Was also subsequently named (confusingly) as the rijksdaalder . In 1618 the full-weight Reichsthaler Specie coin of 25.984 g fine silver was the bank money of the Hamburger Bank worth 3 Hamburg mark banco. Its weight was redefined after 1770 at 9 1 ⁄ 4 to a Cologne Mark of fine silver, or 25.28 g, and it was continued to be used until German reunification in 1871. The Rigsdaler served as

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1806-653: Was launched in November 2010. Dollar Dollar is the name of more than 25 currencies . The United States dollar , named after the international currency known as the Spanish dollar , was established in 1792 and is the first so named that still survives. Others include the Australian dollar , Brunei dollar , Canadian dollar , Eastern Caribbean dollar , Hong Kong dollar , Jamaican dollar , Liberian dollar , Namibian dollar , New Taiwan dollar , New Zealand dollar , Singapore dollar , Trinidad and Tobago Dollar and several others. The symbol for most of those currencies

1849-647: Was used for Dutch trade in the Middle East, in the Dutch East Indies and West Indies, and in the Thirteen Colonies of North America. For the English North American colonists, however, the Spanish peso or "piece of eight" has always held first place, and this coin was also called the "dollar" as early as 1581. Spanish dollars or " pieces of eight " were distributed widely in the Spanish colonies in

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