Cent as the name of an American coin was first suggested by Governor Morris. In 1782, when assistant to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris, he prepared for Congress a report in which he suggested the monetary unit be 1/1440 of a dollar and that the lowest silver coin consist of 100 of these units and be called a cent.
These proposals were not adopted, but they became the basis of the system of coinage worked out later by Jefferson and perfected by Hamilton. Undoubtedly Congress borrowed cent from Morris’ report when in 1786 it adopted a stem of coins based on mills, cents, dimes and dollars and prescribed that the cent should be “the highest copper piece, of which iqo shall be equal to the dollar.” Morris had studied French and he probably derived cent from centime, rather than directly from Latin centum (“hundred ). Cents occurs in Shakespeare, but in French instead of English In King Henry V a captured French soldier, pleading with Ancient Pistol to spare his life, says: Je vous donnerai deux cents ecus (“I will give you two hundred crowns”).
From: “A Book About a Thousand Things” – George Stimpson. 1946
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