In the 1500s Count Hieronymus Schlick of Bohemia started minting silver coins known as Joachimsthalers. The name came from Joachimstal, the valley where the silver was mined. In German, thal or tal refers to a valley or dale (St. Joachim's Valley, now Jáchymov; then part of the Holy Roman Empire, now part of the Czech Republic). His "Joachimsthaler" was later shortened in common usage to taler or thaler. This word evolved to daler in Denmark and Sweden, to daaler in the Netherlands and to daelder in Flemish. In Ethiopia it became talari, and in Italy tallero. Eventually it entered English as "dollar".
On April 2, 1792, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the amount of silver found in Spanish dollar coins then in common use in the new country. Using this information, the United States Dollar was defined by a precise weight of silver.
Various acts have subsequently been passed affecting the amount and type of metal in US coins, so that today there is no legal definition of the term "dollar" to be found in US statute.
Silver was mostly removed from US coins by 1965, when the dollar became a free-floating fiat currency.
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