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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;halfcent1793, post: 4225005, member: 86853&quot;]The following is excepted (sans images; you need to be in EAC to get those) from the April 2020 issue of Penny-Wise.</p><p><br /></p><p>Robert Scot’s report to Congress in response to queries about his working methods appears at first glance to be a clear explanation of exactly how the 1794 cent dies were produced. He wrote:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Before a die to strike money can be made, the previous step is to Engrave an Original one first. The execution of that of the head of the Cent, will take four or five days, and if hardened with success, a Hubb is struck out of it [that is an impression in steel] but if otherways, which is not unfrequent; it is to begin de novo. The Original Die being compleat, and Hubb struck; by a failure in hardening it, it becomes useless immediately, or very soon so. On the success of these processes and that of a good clear and distinct impression in striking the Hubb, depends the celerity with which the Dies that strike the money can be finished, for they are struck with the Hubb previous thereto. With a compleat success in the preceding processes which has hardly ever happened, a head Die as above may be finished in a day. The same may be reckoned on the half Cent head Die, and the same length of time for the Dies of their respective reverses. All other dies are subject to the foregoing preparations and incidental circumstances. </i></p><p><br /></p><p>Clear enough? So it would seem, but read closely, Scot’s report is a marvel of bureaucratic butt-covering. It sounds like failure tried to thwart his progress at every turn. While that was undoubtedly true sometimes, if such failure was as common as he claimed, nothing would ever have gotten done. Yet, somehow, it did. </p><p><br /></p><p><i>The coins tell a completely different story of the way Scot created the early cent obverse dies. </i>He did NOT engrave the master die for 1794 cents <i>de novo</i> as he claimed. Rather, he used Henry Voigt’s Head of ’93 hub to impress the master die of 1794 and then modified the hair in the master die (Figure 6). He then, most likely, raised a few hubs from that master die and used those to impress the 28 working dies produced from it, further retouching the hair in each working die.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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