The spesmilo was equivalent to one thousand spesoj, and worth 0.733 grams (0.0259 oz) of pure gold (0.8 grams of 22 karat gold), which at the time was about one-half United States dollar, two shillings (one-tenth of a pound sterling) in Britain, one Russian ruble, or 2+1⁄2Swiss francs. On 6 November 2022, that quantity of gold would be worth about US$43.50,[1] £38 sterling,[2] €44,[3] ₽2692 Russian roubles,[4] and SFr 43 Swiss francs.[5]
The basic unit, the speso (from Italian spesa or German Spesen;[6]spesmilo is Esperanto for "a thousand pennies"), was purposely made very small to avoid fractions.
Sign
Spesmilo sign ⟨₷⟩
The spesmilo sign, called spesmilsigno in Esperanto, is a monogram of a cursivecapital "S", from whose tail emerges an "m".[7] The currency sign is often typeset as the separate letters Sm.[8]
In Unicode, the character is assigned U+20B7₷SPESMILO SIGN[9] in version 5.2.[10]
Miscellaneous
The stelo was another currency unit used by the Universal League [eo] from 1942 to the 1990s.
An Esperanto version of the board game Monopoly uses play money in denominations of spesmiloj.[11]
.svg)
