Spesmilo Explained

Image 1:1 Spesmilo.png
Image Title 1:1₷ coin
Symbol:
Unit:spesmilo ? -->
Plural:spesmiloj
Obsolete:yes

The spesmilo (pronounced as /eo/, plural spesmiloj pronounced as /eo/) is an obsolete decimal international currency, proposed in 1907 by René de Saussure and used before World War I by a few British and Swiss banks, primarily the Ĉekbanko Esperantista.

The spesmilo was equivalent to one thousand spesoj, and worth 0.733g of pure gold (0.8 grams of 22 karat gold), which at the time was about one-half United States dollar, two shillings (one-tenth of a pound sterling) in Britain, one Russian ruble, or Swiss francs. On 6 November 2022, that quantity of gold would be worth about US$43.50,[1] £38 sterling,[2] €44,[3] ₽2692 Russian roubles,[4] and SFr 43 Swiss francs.[5]

The basic unit, the speso (from Italian spesa or German Spesen;[6] spesmilo is Esperanto for "a thousand pennies"), was purposely made very small to avoid fractions.

Sign

The spesmilo sign, called spesmilsigno in Esperanto, is a monogram of a cursive capital "S", from whose tail emerges an "m".[7] The currency sign is often typeset as the separate letters Sm.[8]

In Unicode, the character is assigned [9] in version 5.2.[10]

Miscellaneous

References

  1. https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=0.025855&From=XAU&To=USD
  2. https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=0.025855&From=XAU&To=GBP
  3. https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=0.025855&From=XAU&To=EUR
  4. https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=0.025855&From=XAU&To=RUB
  5. https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=0.025855&From=XAU&To=CHF
  6. Book: Cherpillod, André . 2007 . Konciza Etimologia Vortaro . . 432 . 9789290170822 . Esperanto.
  7. http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3390.pdf Proposal to encode the Esperanto SPESMILO SIGN in the UCS
  8. http://www.usns.info/pdf/Aust_Coin_&_Banknote_USNS_002_092005.pdf Esperanto and the Dream of a World Currency
  9. https://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html Proposed New Characters – Pipeline Table
  10. [Andrew West (linguist)|Andrew West]
  11. http://eo.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopolo Monopolo

External links