United States dollar

The story

Congress chose the dollar as the national money unit on July 6, 1785. The Coinage Act of 1792 then defined the federal dollar with reference to the Spanish milled dollar and required federal accounts to use dollars and decimal subdivisions. Its ancestry therefore concerns an existing way of reckoning value, as well as a coin standard. ^{[1] [3] [4] [5] [6]}

The first United States silver dollars were struck in 1794. Over time, gold and silver coins, government notes and bank-issued notes all expressed values in the same dollar unit. Changes to the coins’ metal content and to note issuance changed the monetary system without creating a new currency each time. ^{[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]}

The move away from gold happened in stages. Domestic gold arrangements changed in 1933, followed by revaluation in 1934. In 1971 the United States suspended gold conversion for foreign official holders; generalized floating followed in 1973. Those changes altered the dollar’s standard, while dollar-denominated accounts continued. ^{[13] [14]}