Gold standard before the 1930s

Miscellaneous Newbies
1

I was reading that essay Alan Greenspan wrote back in 1960s - Gold and Economic Freedom. In it, he said: "Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold,

and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit

extended by the Federal Reserve banks (“paper reserves”) could serve as legal tender to

pay depositors."

Is he saying here that there were two types of currencies back before the 1930s - one was the gold and the other was paper? I could be reading it incorrectly or something…I’m pretty tired right now and can’t think straight!

2

Actually we had bimetallism which is a fixed rate between gold and silver. Also we had times of paper fiat currency which was redeemable in gold. There were also bank notes which acted as an exchangeable currency. A good book on this is Murray Rothbard’s History of Money and Banking in the United States.