Few people except numismatists know him to have served for 30 years as Warden and Master of the British Royal Mint. In the 1690s, much of the silver coinage had been in circulation for a hundred years or more. Moreover, most of this medieval money was clipped. Silver coins were legal tender by "tale" or count. A worn and clipped silver shilling was legally the same as a new coin. (Gold legally passed by weight, not by count, and there was no incentive to clip gold coins.) Counterfeiting was easy because so many silver coins were worn beyond recognition and were trimmed small. In 1695, Isaac Newton served on a Regency Council with John Locke and Sir Christopher Wren, among others, to consider the problem. Newton and William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, both favored issuing new coins that were devalued by 20%. Reducing the size or purity of the new coins would bring them in line with the statistical norm of the circulating coinage. The Bank of England and John Locke objected and their arguments held sway. The solution was to create a new currency of "milled" (machine-struck) silver coins. In order to make the new currency work, all of the old silver would have to be called in and replaced. Production at the Mint floundered. In the Spring and Summer of 1696, simple bartering reappeared at a level not seen since the Middle Ages. Then, Newton arrived. He assumed his duties as the king's warden on May 2, 1696. Every historian agrees that Newton's unfailingly honesty was the key to his success at the Mint. The Master, Thomas Neale, was lazy and rarely bothered to visit the Mint. Netwon showed up for work at 4:00 am and also made the night shift. He actually occupied the lodgings for the Warden, which no Warden had done in anyone's memory. Watching the coiners, he began time-and-motion studies. Analyzing the data, he found ways to improve efficiency. By June, the output of new coins increased ten times over to £4.7 million. Total output in all denominations weighed 3000 pounds per day. As the king's Warden, Newton also pursued counterfeiters. The full story is told in Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson. Professor Levenson’s narratives in this book have the inclusive force of videos. He puts you on the teeming streets of London, inside thesweat and smoke of the Mint, down the dank alleys and into the rowdy, bawdy taverns where criminals swap and wager. "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, 'Let Newton be' and all was light. " - Alexander Pope
Interesting, I never knew Newton was ever involved with minting coins. Thanks for posting this. A new avenue to explore!
I tried to tell some science teachers the other day about Newton's other job, but they were beyond uninterested. I think it's a great story. He was the one who made "the great recoinage" happen. The mint was in the Tower of London, so that adds a bit of mystery to the whole thing. The ravens must have been in attendance as well.
Great post!! Makes sense with the clipping and counterfeits ehy the lettered and reeded edge adopted and as to crudity of 17th c coins one only has to look as far as the Massachusetts coinage from 1652-82 is lassic 17th c coinAge and typical of the period newton was an exceptional genius and I was not aware of his inn volvement with the British mint thanks!!
David Berlinski in Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World (New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 2000), calls Newton's 30 years at the Mint and his presidency of the Royal Society "uninteresting." Go figure...
I thought it was an interesting chapter in his life, but I am afflicted with a bit of the old numismatism...
There's a series called the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson that takes place in this time period, and features Newton as a character. It covers his time at the mint. It's a very interesting piece of speculative history and got me interested in coins from this era.
What Newton accomplished at the British Royal Mint is a testament to dedication and attention to detail, rather than genius. He was a genius of course, but that would become manifest in his scientific studies. He approached all of his projects with a single-minded focus, and without that kind of commitment, genius is useless. That may seem uninteresting to some What most people don't know is that he also engaged in an enormous amount of Biblical exegesis. I haven't read any of it, but evidently it's all been thoroughly discounted by modern scholars. Oh well...you can't win 'em all.
