Rupee
a silver coin of India. The name is of considerable antiquity. Rupees of different values have been current in the various provinces of India. The rupee of the present day is rated at a shilling and four pence in English money. It is valued in United States gold at 32.4 cents. The accounts of India are kept in rupees. Roughly speaking, Indian values may be converted into American values by allowing three rupee to the dollar. One rupee equals sixteen annas. One hundred thousand rupees are a lac; 10,000,000 a crore.
Rupert (1619-1682), a Bavarian prince. Prince Rupert was the son of Frederick V, king of Bavaria, and Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of England. He was educated at Leyden, then the most celebrated university in Europe, and had military experience in the Thirty Years' War. When the Civil War broke out in England Prince Rupert held command in the army of his uncle, Charles I. He won the battle of Edgehill, but lost those of Marston Moor and Naseby. During the period of Cromwell's ascendency, he lived in Paris, carrying on scientific studies. He is credited with the invention of a brass alloy, known as prince's metal and of the glass bulb known in the laboratory as a Prince Rupert's drop. At the restoration of the Stuarts he returned with his cousin Charles II to England. He was one of the original members of the Royal Society of London; also the first governor of the Hudson Bay Company. Rupert's Land in Canada, now a part of the Northwest Territory, was named for him.