The Draped Bust Dime: 1796-1807
The dime was not one of our most popular coins in the early days of the Republic, but today it has widespread use and many collectors specialize in this denomination. There are several different designs as well as interesting varieties to attract numismatic attention and several books are available for those who wish to pursue this avenue of collecting.
The word “dime” was coined in the late 16th century by Simon Stevin when translating a mathematical work. “Disme,” as it was once spelled, meant one-tenth of something and was derived from a French word meaning “decimal.” There has been discussion over the past several years on the correct pronunciation of “disme” but documents have been discovered which show that the pronunciation at present is the same as in the 1790s.
In the mid-1780s, when a member of the Confederation Congress, Thomas Jefferson wrote several coinage proposals, one of which included a tenth of a dollar, or ‘dime,’ as one of the principal coins to be used in the new United States. He wrote that “The tenth will be precisely the Spanish bit, or half pistareen in some of the States, and in the others, will differ from it but by a very small fraction. This is a coin perfectly familiar to us all. When we shall make a new coin, equal in value to this, it will
