or if I could, I'd be afraid of the results. The origin of bit comes from the practice of cutting the Spanish dollar (peso) into eight radial pieces to make change. In the U.S., the 'bit' as a designation for money dates from the colonial period, when the most common unit of currency used was the Spanish dollar, also known as 'piece of eight', which was worth 8 Spanish silver reales. In sequence that means they are describing 25 cents, 50 cents, 75 cents, a dollar. In the U.S, the bit is equal to 1/8 of a dollar or 12.5 cents. I'm not sure.Īnd do you remember that knock pattern (dum-da-da-dum-dum, dum dum)? The words to that are "Shave and a haircut, two bits" That must have been awhile ago because I certainly can't get a haircut these days for 25 cents. You can figure that out from context too. so there might be some relationship there to the Spanish bits. ![]() In computers there are eight bits in a byte. Because there was no one-bit coin, a dime (10c) was sometimes called a short bit and 15c a long bit.Įven the New York Stock Exchange continued to list stock prices in eighths of a dollar until J(at which time it started listing in sixteenths, but later going to decimals in 2001). Thus, twenty-five cents was dubbed "two bits," as it was a quarter of a Spanish dollar. ![]() Spanish dollars were deemed equivalent in value to a U.S. The term persists colloquially in the United States as a holdover from colonial America when Spanish dollars minted in Mexico, Bolivia and other Spanish colonies were the widest circulating coin. ![]() In sequence that means they are describing 25 cents, 50 cents, 75 cents, a dollar. You can figure that out from context too.
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