Castaing machine
The Castaing machine is a device used to add lettering and decoration to the edge of a coin. Such lettering was necessitated by counterfeiting and edge clipping, which was a common problem resulting from the uneven and irregular hammered coinage. When Aubin Olivier introduced milled coinage to France, he also developed a method of marking the edges with lettering which would make it possible to detect if metal had been shaved from the edge. This method involved using a collar, into which the metal flowed from the pressure of the press. This technique was slower and more costly than later methods. France abandoned milled coinage in favour of hammering in 1585.
England experimented briefly with milled coinage, but it wasn't until Peter Blondeau brought his method of minting coins there in the mid-seventeenth century that such coinage began in earnest in that country. Blondeau also invented a different method of marking the edge, which was, according to him, faster and less costly than the method pioneered by Olivier. Though Blondeau's exact method was secretive, numismatists have asserted that it likely resembled the later device invented by Jean Castaing. Castaing's machine marked the edges by means of two steel rulers, which, when a coinage blank was forced between them, imprinted legends or designs on its edge. Castaing's device found favour in France, and it was eventually adopted in other nations, including Britain and the United States, but it was eventually phased out by mechanised minting techniques.
Background
Prior to the introduction of
Following his swearing in as Lord Protector in 1653, Oliver Cromwell became a proponent of Blondeau's coinage method, which had yet to find favour in the nation's minting establishment.[14] In 1654, Cromwell's government placed Blondeau in charge of a planned mint in Ireland, where the coinage was heavily debased by fraudulent means.[15] The proposed mint never came into existence, but in 1656, Blondeau was given official appointment to strike £2,000 worth of coins bearing Cromwell's portrait with captured Spanish silver.[16] The former Royal Mint superintendent, William John Hocking, believed that the edge lettering on Blondeau's coinage was created by means of a perforated steel strip, through which the coin's metal flowed during striking, creating the raised designs and wording.[17] Hocking suggested that this technique would have been less costly than the older method involving the split collar, because the steel strip could be replaced more economically.[17] However, the numismatist Peter B. Gaspar determined that Blondeau's Cromwell-era coinage was struck without a collar, which suggests that he used a machine to impart the edge lettering prior to striking.[18]
Blondeau returned to France following Cromwell's death, but he was summoned to return to London in 1661 following an order from King Charles II to modernise operations at the Mint.[19] He received a contract from the Mint, which he fulfilled until his death in 1672, to work as an engineer for tools, to instruct moneyers, and to conduct his edge lettering process.[20] In his diary, the Member of Parliament Samuel Pepys remarked upon the secrecy maintained by Blondeau regarding this process, stating that coiners at the Mint "mark the letters on the edges, which is kept as the great secret by Blondeau."[21]
Invention
Though production of hammered coinage ceased in France in 1645, edge lettering wasn't immediately reintroduced to that nation's milled coinage.
Two years later, in 1688, in response to counterfeiting and to raise money to support the Nine Years' War, Castaing proposed a method of reshaping and restriking existing coins, which was ultimately accepted.[25] Castaing's edge lettering machine was used on the overstruck coins, and the Royal Mint supervisor Martin Masselin, the individual who undertook the process, was obligated to pay Castaing for its use.[25] In 1691, Masselin was dismissed, as he and his clerks were found to have stolen from the Mint during the reformation of the coinage, and Castaing was appointed to perform the edge lettering and restriking in his place.[26] A second reform took place in 1693. Castaing was imprisoned in 1700 on charges of using inaccurate scales to weigh the coins to be reminted; according to his wife, Marie Hippolyte Castaing (née Bosch), the allegations were false, originating from opponents who lost money as a result of his machine's introduction to the French Mint and the resulting monetary reforms.[27]
According to the engineer and numismatist George E. Ewing, Jr., Castaing's machine was likely similar to that used by Blondeau in England, but "Castaing's improvements made his machine worthy of being called an invention."[25]
Operation
An 1819 account described the operation of Castaing's machine:
The machine used for this purpose consists of two plates of steel in form of rulers, on which the edging is engraved, half on the one, and half on the other. One of these plates is immovable, being strongly bound with screws to a copper plate on a board or table; the other is movable, and slides on the copper plate by means of a handle, and a wheel, or pinion, of iron, the teeth of which catch in other teeth, on the surface of the sliding plate. The planchet, being placed horizontally between these two plates, is carried along by the motion of the movable one; so as by the time that it had made half a turn, it is found marked all round.[28]
According to a 1765 Encyclopédie entry, Castaing's machine was capable of applying the edge lettering to 20,000 coins daily.[29]
The machine came into use at various mints throughout the world as a way to improve upon the existing machinery used for edge lettering. A copy of Castaing's machine was put into use at the British Royal Mint, and in 1792, the director of the newly established United States Mint in Philadelphia, David Rittenhouse, ordered three coinage presses from England
to which he added a modified version of the machine.
References
- ^ a b Ewing, 1985a, p. 61.
- ^ a b c Spink, 1908, p. 10454.
- ^ a b Spink, 1908, p. 10455.
- ^ Seaby, 1985, pp. xvii–xviii.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 60.
- ^ a b Ewing, 1985a, p. 63.
- ^ Verture, 1780, p. 17.
- ^ Craig, 2010, p. 152.
- ^ Wheatley, 1904, p. 125.
- ^ Henfrey, 1877, p. 61.
- ^ Henfrey, 1877, pp. 73–74.
- ^ Henfrey, 1877, p. 74.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 62.
- ^ Henfrey, 1877, p. 80.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 64.
- ^ Craig, 2010, pp. 152–153.
- ^ a b Hocking, 1909, p. 90.
- ^ Gaspar, 1976, p. 65.
- ^ Craig, 2010, p. 158.
- ^ Craig, 2010, p. 159–160.
- ^ Wheatley, 1904, p. 124.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, pp. 61–67.
- ^ Ewing, 1985b, p. 1748.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 66–67.
- ^ a b c d Ewing, 1985a, p. 67.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 68.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 68–69.
- ^ Rees, 1819, Coinage.
- ^ Encyclopédie, 1765, p. 665.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 69.
- ^ Ewing, 1985a, p. 71.
- ^ The Numismatist, 1913, p. 428.
- ^ Ure, 1853, p. 236.
Bibliography
- Anonymous (1765). Denis Diderot (ed.). Encyclopédie. Vol. 10. Chez Samuel Faulche & Compaigne, Libraires & Imprimeurs.
- Craig, John (2010). The Mint: A History of the London Mint from A.D. 287 to 1948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-17077-2.
- Ewing Jr., George E. (1985). "Origins of Edge Lettering on Early American Copper Coinage". America's Copper Coinage 1783–1857. New York, New York: American Numismatic Society. ISBN 0-89722-207-5.
- Ewing Jr., George E. (September 1985). "A Remembrance of Jean Castaing". The Numismatist. Colorado Springs, Colorado: American Numismatic Association.
- Gaspar, Peter P. (1976). "Simon's Cromwell Crown Dies in the Royal Mint Museum and Blondeau's Method for the Production of Lettered Edges". The British Numismatic Journal. XLVI. British Numismatic Society. Archived from the original on 2015-11-20. Retrieved 2015-01-29.
- Henfrey, Henry William (1877). Numismata Cromwelliana: or, the Medallic History of Oliver Cromwell. London: John Russell Smith.
- Hocking, W.J. (1909). "Simon's Dies in the Royal Mint Museum, with Some Notes on the Early History of Coinage by Machinery". The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society. IX. London: Bernard Quaritch.
- "Philippe Gengembre". The Numismatist. XXVI. Brooklyn, New York: American Numismatic Association. 1913.
- Pepys, Samuel (1904). Wheatley, Henry B. (ed.). The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Vol. III. London: George Bell and Sons.
- Rees, Abraham (1819). The Cyclopædia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature. Vol. VIII. A. Strahan.
- Seaby, Peter (1985). The Story of British Coinage. Spink & Son Ltd. ISBN 0-900652-74-8.
- "Olivier, Aubin". The Monthly Numismatic Circular. XVI. Spink & Son's. 1908.
- Ure, Andrew (1853). A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines (4 ed.). Little, Brown & Co.
- Verture, George (1780). Medals, Coins, Great Seals, and Other Works of Thomas Simon: Engraved and Described by George Verture (Second ed.). J. Nichols.
Further reading
- de Bazinghen, François-André Abot (1764). Traité des Monnoies. Paris: Chez Guillyn.