History of mints

The history of mints begins in the 7th century BC, when the first mint was likely established in Lydia for coining gold, silver and electrum. The Lydian innovation of manufacturing coins under the authority of the state spread to neighboring Greece, and from there spread to other areas of the Mediterranean. At about the same time, coins and mints appeared independently in China and spread to Korea and Japan. The manufacture of coins in the Roman Empire, dating from about the 4th century BC, significantly influenced later development of coin minting in Europe.

The origin of the word "mint" is ascribed to the manufacture of silver coin at Rome in 269 BC at the temple of Juno Moneta. This goddess became the personification of money, and her name was applied both to money and to its place of manufacture. Metals were used for money at an early stage of civilization, and are well suited to the purpose, owing to their great intrinsic value and their durability, indestructibility, divisibility and rarity. The best metals for coinage are gold, silver, platinum, copper, tin, nickel, aluminum, zinc, iron, and their alloys; certain alloys of gold, silver, copper and nickel have the best combination of the required qualities.

From rings and ornaments to coins

The earliest metallic money did not consist of coins, but of unminted metal in the form of rings and other ornaments or of weapons, which were used for thousands of years by the Egyptian, Chaldean and Assyrian empires.

Silver was coined in the island of Aegina soon afterwards. The art of coining was introduced by the Greeks into Italy and other countries bordering on the Mediterranean and into Persia and India. Subsequently the Romans laid the foundations of modern minting. Coining originated independently in China, and spread from China to Japan and Korea.

Early minting technology

Coins may be made by casting in moulds or by striking between engraved dies. The Romans cast their larger copper coins, in clay moulds carrying distinctive markings, not because they knew nothing of striking, but because it was not suitable for such large masses of metal. Casting is now used only by counterfeiters. The most ancient coins were cast in bulletshaped or conical moulds and marked on one side by means of a die which was struck with a hammer. The "blank" or unmarked piece of metal was placed on a small anvil (ambos), and the die was held in position with tongs. The reverse or lower side of the coin received a rectangular mark made by the sharp edges of the little anvil. Subsequently the anvil was marked in various ways, and decorated with letters and figures of beasts, and later still the ambos was replaced by a reverse die. The spherical blanks soon gave place to lenticular-shaped ones. The blank was made red-hot and struck between cold dies. One blow was usually insufficient, and the method was similar to that still used in striking medals in high relief, except that the blank is now allowed to cool before being struck. With the substitution of iron for bronze as the material for dies, about 300 AD, the practice of striking the blanks while they were hot was gradually discarded.

In the middle ages bars of metal were cast and hammered out on an anvil. Portions of the flattened sheets were then cut out with shears, struck between dies and again trimmed with shears. A similar method had been used in Egypt under the Ptolemies (c. 300 BC) but had been forgotten. Square pieces of metal were also cut from cast bars, converted into round disks by hammering and then struck between dies. In striking, the lower die was fixed into a block of wood, and the blank piece of metal laid upon it by hand. The upper die was then placed on the blank, and kept in position by means of a holder round which was placed a roll of lead to protect the hand of the operator while heavy blows were struck with a hammer. An early improvement was the introduction of a tool resembling a pair of tongs, the two dies being placed one at the extremity of each leg. This avoided the necessity of readjusting the dies between blows, and ensured greater accuracy in the impression.

Minting technology in 16th and 17th century Europe

Minting by means of a falling weight (monkey press) intervened between the hand hammers and the screw press in many places. In Birmingham in particular this system became highly developed and was long in use. In 1553, the French engineer Aubin Olivier introduced screw presses for striking coins, together with rolls for reducing the cast bars and machines for punching-out round disks from flattened sheets of metal. [Sargent, T. J., & Velde, F. R. (2002). "The big problem of small change". Princeton University Press.] After being discarded in 1585, except for making medals, they were reintroduced by Jean Varin in 1640 and the practice of hammering was forbidden in 1645. In England the new machinery was tried in London in 1561, but abandoned soon afterwards; it was finally adopted in 1662, although the old pieces continued in circulation until 1696. At first the rolls were driven by workmen by means of cranks, but later they were worked by horses, mules or water-power.

Minting technology advances in the industrial revolution

Steam-power was introduced to coin manufacture by Matthew Boulton and Watt in Birmingham in 1788, and was adopted by the Royal Mint, London, in 1810. Boulton and Watt's screw press, invented in 1788 and used at the Royal Mint until 1881, was worked by atmospheric pressure applied to a piston. The piston was in communication with a vacuum vessel from which the air had been pumped by steam power.

Modern minting technology

By the early 20th century, mints were using electrical power to drive rolls, the advantage being that each pair of rolls could be driven independently without the intervention of cumbrous shafting.

ee also

* Mint (coin)
* Soho Mint
* Royal Mint
* Coining (machining)
* Coin die
* Benvenuto Cellini

External links

* [http://www.segoviamint.org/english/history.htm The Old Segovia Mint]
* [http://rarecoins.org/us_mint_history.htm United States Mint History]

References