Dollar coins, when first struck by the US Mint in 1794, were intended to properly represent the new nation to the world and to support the domestic economy.
The early dollars, when introduced, were not received with universal acclaim.
However, American coin collectors have an understandable affection for these coins as the first US dollars.
You may be wondering, how would one describe the first dollar? As a 15th century German coin, which in fact it was.
The dollar was not invented in America.
Nor was the word dollar, for that matter.
Substantial silver deposits were discovered in the late 1400s in the Joachimsthal Valley in what would one day be Germany.
This coincided with growing European trade with the East, as the Middle Ages receded.
The large silver Joachimsthaler was an immediate success as a trade coin.
It became known more simply as a taler.
Soon the coin was copied by other European nations.
Taler became daalder (Danish) and daler (Dutch).
By the 1600s Spanish colonial mints in Mexico and Peru were coining a large eight reale coin that evolved in the early 1700s into the Spanish Milled Dollars so popular, and necessary, in the English colonies of North America.
Now, better informed on the origination of dollar coins, you may yet be wondering, what did the first United States dollar coins look like? They were substantially the same size and weight as the omnipresent Spanish dollars.
Their design was another matter.
No monarchial emblems or trappings here, the obverse, or front side, of the new US dollars bore a youthful, upward looking Liberty head with loose, windblown hair.
These dollar coins are thus known as Flowing Hair dollars.
The word Liberty appeared at the top of the coin, with the four digits of the date at the bottom.
A border of stars representing the states completed the design.
The reverse displayed an eagle surrounded by a wreath with United States of America encircling all.
The appearance of the Flowing Hair coin was criticized by those who felt that the unbound hair that adorned the head of Liberty lacked a sense of dignity thought unseemly for the foundation coin of a new nation.
The eagle, as rendered, was thought to be lacking in majesty (scrawny and turkey were the terms often applied.
) The Liberty head was changed late in 1795 to a more refined image, from a portrait by famed artist Gilbert Stuart of Anne Willing Bingham, a prominent Philadelphia socialite.
Dollar coins with this image are known as the Draped Bust dollars.
In 1798 the small eagle reverse was changed to a large heraldic eagle, standing behind a shield of stars and stripes, clutching arrows in one talon, and an olive branch in the other.
This design was generally accepted by the public as an improvement, though the more timid among students of heraldry pointed out that the arrows held in the right talon might be interpreted as a predisposition to war.