Concept
The mill (American English) or mil (Commonwealth English, except Canada) is a unit of currency (sometimes symbolized as ₥), used in several countries as one-thousandth of the base unit. In the United States, it is a notional unit equivalent to a thousandth of a United States dollar (a hundredth of a dime or a tenth of a cent). In the United Kingdom, it was proposed during the decades of discussion on decimalisation as a division of sterling's pound. While this system was never adopted in the United Kingdom, the currencies of some British or formerly British territories did adopt it, such as the Palestine pound and the Maltese lira. The term comes from the Latin "millesimum", meaning "thousandth part". In the United States, the term was first used by the Continental Congress in 1786, being described as the "lowest money of account, of which 1000 shall be equal to the federal dollar". The Coinage Act of 1792 describes milles and other subdivisions of the dollar: That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars or units, or tenths, cents or hundredths, and milles or thousandths, a being the tenth part of a dollar, a cent the hundredth part of a dollar, a mille the thousandth part of a dollar, and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. The mint of Philadelphia made half cents worth 5 mills each from 1793 to 1857. Tokens in this denomination were issued by some states and local governments (and by some private interests) for such uses as payment of sales tax. These were of inexpensive material such as tin, aluminium, plastic or paper. Rising inflation depreciated the value of these tokens in relation to the value of their constituent materials; this depreciation led to their eventual abandonment. Virtually none were made after the 1960s. Today, most Americans would refer to fractions of a cent rather than mills, a term which is widely unknown. For example, a gasoline price of $3.