which means there were 8 of them in a dollar! and a shave and haircut cost one quarter. for practical reasons there were the "short bit" of 10 cents and the "long bit" of 15 cents.
The 8 units to a dollar was inherited from the Spanish "pieces of 8", which used to be a widespread currency in the English colonies in North America.
The New York Stock Exchanged listed stock prices in units of 1/8 dollar all the way until 1997, somehow.
