With the passage of the Coinage Act of 1965, the dime's silver content was removed. The silver percentage was increased to 90.0% with the introduction of the Seated Liberty dime the use of a richer alloy was offset by reducing the diameter from 18.8 millimeters (0.740 inches) to its current figure of 17.9 millimeters (0.705 inches). Among the six was a silver coin, 'which shall be, in weight and value, one-tenth part of a silver unit or dollar'.įrom 1796 to 1837, dimes were composed of 89.24% silver and 10.76% copper, the value of which required the coins to be physically very small to prevent their commodity value from being worth more than face value. Hamilton, the nation's first Secretary of the Treasury, recommended the issuance of six such coins in 1791, in a report to Congress. The first known proposal for a decimal-based coinage system in the United States was made in 1783 by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and David Rittenhouse. The Coinage Act of 1792 established the dime (spelled 'disme' in the legislation), cent, and mill as subdivisions of the dollar equal to 1⁄ 10, 1⁄ 100 and 1⁄ 1000 dollar respectively.

As of 2011, the dime cost 5.65 cents to produce. The dime is currently the only United States coin in general circulation that is not denominated in terms of dollars or cents. The word dime comes from the Old French disme ( Modern French dîme), meaning ' tithe' or 'tenth part', from the Latin decima. Roosevelt and the reverse boasts an olive branch, a torch, and an oak branch, from left to right respectively. The obverse of the current dime depicts the profile of President Franklin D. coins currently minted for circulation, being 0.705 inches (17.91 millimeters) in diameter and 0.053 in (1.35 mm) in thickness. The dime is the smallest in diameter and is the thinnest of all U.S. The denomination was first authorized by the Coinage Act of 1792. The dime, in United States usage, is a ten- cent coin, one tenth of a United States dollar, labeled formally as 'one dime'.

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