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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 3044380, member: 57463&quot;]That touches on the very definition of &quot;coin.&quot;</p><p><b>In &quot;Numismatic News&quot; for July 5, 1994, Alan Herbert</b></p><p><b>claimed that the US Mint holds legal title to the word &quot;coin.&quot;</b></p><p><b>He said: &quot;The term &#039;coin&#039; has been legally and professionally</b></p><p><b>banned for use in the hobby to prevent applying it to</b></p><p><b>medals, tokens and other similar pieces. A coin is defined</b></p><p><b>as a piece that has been issued and is assigned a specific</b></p><p><b>value by a legal body entitled to issue money.&quot;</b></p><p>(Originally here <a href="http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v08n04a24.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v08n04a24.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v08n04a24.html</a></p><p>Archived also here: <a href="https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/periodical/4451" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/periodical/4451" rel="nofollow">https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/periodical/4451</a> )</p><p><br /></p><p>But many early US Federal coins did not state a specific value. And, of course, the UK Gold Sovereign still does not.</p><p><br /></p><p>As an aside, word &quot;dime&quot; originally was spelled &quot;disme&quot; was pronounced &quot;deem.&quot; It seems unusual to us, but tens arithmetic for money was specifically advocated only about 1600. Even into the mid-1800s, the German thaler was often divided into halves, thirds, and quarters, with the 12th being the common denominator, of course. And we have the US Quarter Dollar, of course, the 20-cent piece being a short-lived experiment.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Although he did not invent decimals (they had been used by the Arabs and the Chinese long before Stevin&#039;s time) he [Simon Stevin] did introduce their use in mathematics in Europe. Stevin states that the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures and weights would only be a matter of time (but he probably would be amazed to know that in the 21st century some countries still resist adopting decimal systems). Robert Norton published an English translation of <i>La Theinde&nbsp; in London in 1608. It was titled <i>Disme, The Arts of Tenths or Decimal Arithmetike</i> and it was this translation which inspired Thomas Jefferson to propose a decimal currency for the United States (note that one tenth of a dollar is still called a dime). Stevin&#039;s notation was to be taken up by</i>&nbsp; <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Clavius.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Clavius.html" rel="nofollow">Clavius</a> and <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Napier.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Napier.html" rel="nofollow">Napier</a> and it developed into that used today.&quot; -- <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Stevin.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Stevin.html" rel="nofollow">http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Stevin.html</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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