Posted by ESC on October 17, 2000 In Reply to: Two Bits posted
by Tim Finnegan on October 17, 2000 : What is the origin of a
quarter being equal to "Two Bits"? "Listening to America" by
Stuart Berg Flexner (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982) has
some detailed about "bits": ".Being worth one-eighth of a
Spanish peso or Spanish dollar, the original Spanish 'real' or
'bit' was worth 12 ½ cents. Not only was this bit itself a coin,
but the peso could be cut into halves, quarters or pie-shaped
wedges of eights, so a bit was both a coin and a cut-off section
of a peso worth the same amount. This 'bit,' being 12 ½ cents,
gave us our term 'two bits' (1730, originally as two separate
bits or the sum of 25 cents, then as our own 25-cent coin in
1792)."