- Spesmilo
The Spesmilo (IPA2|spesmilo) is an obsolete
decimal internationalcurrency , proposed in 1907 byRené de Saussure and used before the First World War by a few British and Swiss banks, primarily the "Ĉekbanko esperantista".The "spesmilo" was equivalent to one thousand "spesoj", and worth 0.733 grams of
gold , which at the time was about one-halfUnited States dollar , oneRussian ruble , or 2½Swiss franc s.The basic unit, the "speso" (from Latin "
spes ", "hope". "spesmilo" is Esperanto for "a thousand of spesoj"), was purposely made very small to avoid fractions.The Spesmilo sign
The "Sm" character, called "Spesmilsigno" in Esperanto, is a
monogram of acursive capital "S", from the tail of which emerges an "m". [ [http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3390.pdf Proposal to encode the Esperanto SPESMILO SIGN in the UCS, byMichael Everson ] ] The currency sign is oftentypeset as the separate letters "Sm". [ [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usns.info%2Fpdf%2FAust_Coin_%26_Banknote_USNS_002_092005.pdf&ei=ohdbR-umMJKcepK3hawJ&usg=AFQjCNGUZGp0BKYBSCaJRtbcwGW_u3wkbQ&sig2=61Skn_mVUnNrlomO8M5sOQ Esperanto and the Dream of a World Currency] ] The character has been assigned theUnicode codepoint U+20B7 [ [http://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html Proposed New Characters - Pipeline Table ] ] and was approved for eventual inclusion in Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. [ [http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2008/04/whats-new-in-unicode-52.html BabelStone: What's new in Unicode 5.2?] ]ee also
* The "
stelo " was another currency unit used by the "Universala Ligo " from 1942 to the 1990s.References
External links
* [http://www.eventoj.hu/arkivo/eve-050.htm "Streboj al internacia mono"] eo icon
* [http://worldcoingallery.com/countries/Esperanto.html Images of Stelo coins]
* [http://www.usns.info/pdf/Aust_Coin_&_Banknote_USNS_002_092005.pdf ACBN Article about Esperanto coins]
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