Hi, I was wondering how coins were minted in the 1700's and 1800's. You guys have plenty of knowledge, and I can't find any videos or pictures or articles about how they did it so perfectly. Thanks for any help!
In 1643 the French Royal Mint became the first to start making milled coins. Prior to that, coins were minted by hand using the hammer method. Everything was done by hand prior to that. But in 1643 that all changed and machines began being used. Primitive machines perhaps but still machines. Planchet strip was produced, rolled out to a consistent thickness, planchets were cut by machine to a consistent size, and the planchets were struck using mechanical presses. But the dies, the dies were still largely made by hand. And that would not change until around 1870. Answer your question ?
One book that I found at my local University Library that helped me understand how coins were made is entitled, The Art and Craft of Coin Making: A history of Minting Technology by Denis R. Cooper, published in Britain in 1988. Even bad copies of this book will cost you $350+, because this text was only published once, and no new editions exist. Bummer. Probably one of the most influential books on coins that I have yet read (influential to me), if you are into the "manufacturing process" behind coins, like I am. This book answers almost all of your questions, with the exception of how coins are made in 2018. Coins are designed, engraved and minted VERY differently nowadays from the "old" methods described in Cooper's book.
Another option is the 1986 book called "Money, from cowrie shells to credit cards". Published by British Museum Publications Ltd for the Trustees of the British Museum. It has a lot of illustrations and a lot of information for a very low cost. It covers the origins, making, and sevral other topics. A very interesting book to read. I paid about $5 a long time ago. It is still availble at Amazon for less that $3 for a used copy. https://www.amazon.com/Money-Cowrie-Shells-Credit-Cards/dp/0714108626
Thanks for the help! What changed in 1870? Was there a new invention that helped to mint the coins or something?
I think Doug might be referring to the ability to create significantly similar coins by using successive negative and positive pieces of tool steel from a "mother" piece (master die). See below:
Yeah, it's just outrageous how much money some idiots are asking for Cooper's book. Let's just say that I now have unfettered access to the book. It just sits on a university library shelf a few miles from my house, collecting dust. Until I come along and look at it at my leisure.
If you're interested in US coins, get Roger Burdette's book From Mine to Mint. This covers all the die making technologies that were adopted over time, including various reducing lathes, as well as coining machinery. Other countries had different timelines for adopting technologies that followed the end of the hammered coinage production that lasted 2 millennia. France had abandoned hammered coinage and adopted a press for milled coinage before Britain did in 1663. Milled coinage may have even started earlier, as there were trials of suitable presses the 1560s, but they weren't as fast, threatened mint workers' jobs, and were made under the supervision of a Frenchman, Eloye Mestrelle. When milled coinage was scrapped for the first time, Mestrelle became a counterfeiter, which eventually bought him a death sentence. Seventy years later, Nicholas Briot, also French, tried to introduce milled coinage for Charles I, using a screw press for smaller coins and a rocker press for large ones, with the same results -- far superior coins, but a casualty of politics. Then came the British Civil War. Milled coins were brought back by Cromwell in 1656 via another Frenchman, Pierre Blondeau (Briot died in 1646), then were made exclusively starting in 1663. This is essentially the technology used by the early US mint. Additional modernization, like the steam press, which was first used in the US in 1836, was in use in Britain in 1810.
Well kinda I guess, that was when they started, at least in the US, hubbing the dies. A hub is the reverse of a die, same exact design but in relief. In other words the design on a hub is all raised, while on a die it all incuse. So hubs were made and pressed into the dies. But of course the hubs were still carved by hand. Prior to that, and depending on the time frame of course, in essence the dies were all made by hand one at a time. In the beginning it was all hand carving/engraving, but as time progressed the "die sinkers", as they came to be known, began using punches to make the process easier. They'd carve a punch of say the bust in relief, then place that on a die blank and hit it with a hammer - thus punching the design into the die. Did the same thing with individual letters and numerals and other design features. Then they started using gang punches, sometimes with portions or even entire words on a single punch. It was this process that eventually led to using hubs to make dies.
I googled "Coin Minting 1700s" and this came up. https://www.fleur-de-coin.com/articles/ancient-minting
As John, messydesk, explained above there were several people who experimented with milled coinage for some time prior to the French mint adopting and switching over to the process. And there were probably several more than those he mentioned. Milled coinage was not something that just came along out of the blue one day. You first have to remember that for 2,000 years everybody had minted coins basically the same way - the hammered method. That was what they knew, what had always been, and change, or acceptance of change, was not something that came quickly. And there was a whole lot more to the hammered method than some guy sitting at a block of wood and and striking coins. In the book I helped write, Gold Ducats Of The Netherlands, the entire process of the hammered method from beginning to end, from how the raw materials were obtained to how coins were distributed into circulation, is described in great detail. It covers literally everything from how one obtained the right to mint coins to the laws that governed minting coins, to the mixing of the alloys to the desired fineness, the tolerances allowed, the cutting of the planchets by hand, all the testing of the alloys both before and after striking, even the punishment/s administered for not following the laws. There is just so much that the average collector does not know about all of this. They have no idea how many people worked in a mint, how many different jobs there were, and how extremely complicated the whole process was. It was all of this and more that made switching over to the entirely new process of milled coinage such a huge step. Basically Louis XIII was hanging his very crown, risking his entire Kingdom on making this change. But he made it, and the entire world soon followed in his footsteps.
1810 at the Royal Mint, Matthew Boulton was strike coinage with steam powered presses in 1787, and used them to strike the British Cartwheel penny and two pence coins in 1797. He sold a steam powered mint to the British government and he was under the impression they would use it for silver and gold and he would be able to keep his contract for coining copper. Once the mint was finished they told him thank you very much but we are going to do all the coinage ourselves now. Full hubbing of dies for US coins on a regular basis began in 1836. There had been some experiment as early as 1794, and about a third of the rev dies for 1798 cents, and all the reverses of 1799 and 1800 cents came from fully hubbed die. From 1836 to the late 1860's the Master dies had the lettering punched in by hand when designs changed, but working hubs and working dies were fully hubbed. Around 1870 would be when the first reducing lathes came into use that allowed for the creation of Master hubs from large models. The US mint bought their first Hill Reducing Lathe in 1867. Dates continued to be punched into dies by hand until 1907 (for the most part using four digit logotypes after 1840). Mintmarks continued to be punched into the dies by hand until 1990. I concur with Messydesk, you really should get a copy of From Mine to Mint. It goes into a lot of detail about all aspects of how coins are made, and it isn't an overly expensive book. $40 and that basically get you three copies, a paperback copy, and a CD-rom that has a searchable version for your computer and a ebook reader version. I've read my copy three times now along with using it to reference.
I appreciate the correction. It wasn't that long ago, last year if I remember right, that I asked the question of when it began because I didn't know. The answer given to me was 1870, and referenced to Roger's book as well. Can't recall for sure who provided the answer but something was apparently misunderstood.
Most if not all of it is in From Mine to Mint, but I've been involved with early US numismatics for something like 40 years and I've picked up a lot of information from various sources along the way so I would say I got the information from 40+ years of study. I knew most of it before From Mine to Mint came out. But the book did contain a lot of information on operations that I didn't know.
