RE: Spanish Two Real from 1795 and the Origin of the "$" symbol
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When I was a kid I had a paper route. I remember one of the old men told me once while he was searching for his money "There are two bits (the paper was only 25 cents at the time... seems like years ago) on my table somewhere". I remember thinking "what the heck is a bit??". He then gave me the quarter so I figured it was some kind of weird slang and I left. I didn't learn the history behind that term until much later.
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That's a great story! I grew up with video games and they were described as "8-bit" or "16-bit". I bet older generations laughed at how inexpensive these new-fangled video games are! !LOLZ
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I don't know if any documentation has come to light in the years since, but when I was studying computer science at university (in the late 90s), we learned that while there is no evidence to show that 8 bits per byte was chosen because of the old Spanish dollar, it is commonly thought to be the case. Just like now, those early computer designers were huge geeks, so such historic nods wouldn't at all be surprising.
So there we go, next time a kid is going on and on about retrogaming (to my son and his friends, all retrogaming is "8-bit", regardless if it's NES, SNES, or even atari 2600) you can stop them and tell how that is related to the old spanish dollar.