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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 7878108, member: 112&quot;]Think about it, from the time the very first design was carved into a die for the first coin until today, it has been a continuous process of finding different, faster, easier ways to do it. </p><p><br /></p><p>In the beginning an artist came up with an idea, a picture in his mind and he carved that into metal by hand. Adding depth here and there to create dimension for the image. Each letter, each aspect, literally everything about the design was carved by hand removing tiny, tiny pieces of metal at a time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Eventually they came up with the idea of creating/carving punches for each letter, each individual part of the design, allowing them to use those punches to speed up the process, make it faster and easier. But the design still had to be conceived in the mind of an artist, and each punch still had to be carved by hand, and then hammered into the die by hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then they created gang punches containing several letters, or entire words, and punches of the entire bust or full or partial body figure. And that speeded things up even more. </p><p><br /></p><p>And then they came up with the idea of creating hubs and using hubs to create complete dies all at one time. And that speeded things up even more. And then master hubs, master dies, working hubs, working dies. With each advance adding speed and ease.</p><p><br /></p><p>Today, instead of an artist having to render his design by drawing it on paper, by hand, before carving it into metal, the artist draws his design, by hand, on computer touch screen using a stylus. And then he selects depths for this portion, that portion, to add dimension until the design is complete. Once complete, the computer takes that information and sends it to other computers that then cut the design into metal creating the master hubs/dies etc. </p><p><br /></p><p>But the process from beginning to end is basically the same. The design is still first conceived in the mind of an artist, then drawn by hand, and then cut into metal to produce coins. And yeah, the depth, the dimension is going to be different, less than it was days gone by, but it has to be simply to make it an affordable, faster, easier process. From day one until this day it has been the same thing, the same reasoning, and ultimately the same result - the creation of coins that can be used as money.</p><p><br /></p><p>I guess my point is a cliche - the more things change they more things stay the same. Whether it was 2500-3000 years ago, or today, we are still doing the very same things for the very same reasons. And, in the years to come we probably still will be. Only by then some machine will able to read the mind of the artist without the artist having to do anything but think about it, and then other machines will simply do what must be done to produce the coins. Result, same thing, same reasons.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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