This vintage bond signed by former US president George Washington in 1792 contains the first use of the dollar sign on an American financial document

The dollar sign is among the world's most potent symbols, emblematic of far more than US currency.

It's shorthand for the American dream and all the consumerism and commodification that comes with it, signifying at once sunny aspiration, splashy greed and rampant capitalism.It's been co-opted by pop culture (think Ke$ha when she first started out, or any number of fast-fashion t-shirts) and borrowed by artists (Salvador Dali fashioned a moustachefrom it, Andy Warhol rendered it in acrylic and silkscreen, creating an iconic body of work that itself now sells for $$$).

It's used widely in computer coding and it provides money-mouth emoji with its dazed eyes and lolling tongue. Yet despite its polyglot ubiquity, the origins of the dollar signremain far from clear, with competing theories touching on Bohemian coins, the Pillars of Hercules and harried merchants.

The British pound sign has a history going back 1,200 years, when it was first used by the Romans as an abbreviation for 'libra pondo', the empire's basic unit of weight. Asany amateur astrologer will tell you, libra means scales in Latin, and libra pondo literally translates as 'a pound by weight'.

In Anglo-Saxon England, the pound became a unit of currency, equivalent to - surprise, surprise - a pound of silver. Vast riches, in other words. But along with the Roman name,the Anglo-Saxons borrowed the sign, an ornate letter 'L'. The crossbar came along later, indicating that it's an abbreviation, and a cheque in London's Bank of England Museumshows that the pound sign had assumed its current form by 1661, even if it took a little longer for it to become universally adopted.

To read the complete article, see:
The curious origins of the dollar symbol(https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190528-the-curious-origin-of-the-symbol)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
THE ORIGINS OF THE DOLLAR SIGN (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v10n08a12.html)
CAJORI ON THE ORIGIN OF THE DOLLAR SIGN (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n18a18.html)