These central banks, nevertheless, originally performed the functions that were close to those of commercial banks, and they were only gradually transformed into modern central banks. For example, the Bank of England, which was born in 1694, was exclusively assigned the role of issuing banknotes by the Bank Charter Act in 1844, 174 years ago, and it became the model of modern central banks.
Our situation is, of course, very different. Although for us, too, a balance-of-payments deficit is a matter of routine, we cannot finance it with our currency. In other words, both we and the Americans need dollars in order to cover the import surplus. The difference is that they can print them.