Old money, Part 2

I find these quotes from Bernstein fascinating because popular history books so often mention money, but so rarely describe what that money was.

[The eight-real "Spanish dollar"], which flooded the European currency markets in the sixteenth century, was approximately the same size and weight as the Bohemian thaler—from which the word "dollar" derives. (Since eight reales equaled one "dollar," and the coins were too unwieldly for everyday use, they were frequently broken up into eight one-real pieces, hence the term "piece of eight," and the nickname of the quarter-dollar, "two-bits."

-- William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2008), page 211.