At the same time, here in Argentina we invented the Convertibility: "One Peso equal to One Dollar" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_Currency_Board The main difference is that here the pesos were always "actual" bills, but the real started as "imaginary" bills.

It worked initially (better than I expected), but we have an inflation that was 1% or 2% over the dollar inflation. So after 10 years we have a 20% difference in price, but we maintained the "One Peso equal to One Dollar" until it exploded. IIRC in Brazil the transition from 1-1 to 1-X was softer.