A mint is an industrial facility which manufactures coins that can be used as currency .
44-623: There were a number of mints in Scotland, for the production of the Scottish coinage . The most important mint was in the capital, Edinburgh , which was active from the reign of David I (1124–1153), and was the last to close, in the 19th century. Carlisle was probably the first Scottish mint in 1136. According to Bateson, David I began to mint coins after capturing the city. Mints at Bamburgh and Corbridge in Northumberland, under
88-514: A Mint as part of his industrial plant. He invented a steam driven screw press in the same year (his original machinery was being used at the Royal Mint until 1881, almost a century later), which worked by atmospheric pressure applied to a piston . The piston was in communication with a vacuum vessel from which the air had been pumped by steam power . He installed eight of these state-of-the-art steam-driven presses in his factory, each with
132-418: A die which was struck with a hammer. The "blank" or unmarked piece of metal was placed on a small anvil , and the die was held in position with tongs . The reverse or lower side of the coin received a "rough incuse" by the hammer. Later a rectangular mark, a "square incuse", was made by the sharp edges of the little anvil, or punch . The rich iconography of the obverse of the early electrum coins contrasts with
176-411: A local engineer had perfected a mechanical process of rolling bullion to the required thickness, cutting blanks from the rolled metal, and striking coins from those blanks. This technology was significantly more advanced than the general manufacturing processes of the 16th century making the coins difficult to counterfeit. The negotiations which obtained rights to the process for France were so secret that
220-589: A mint at Segovia which used this technique to convert silver from the Americas to coins efficiently. This allowed the king to pay his debts at a better rate than he otherwise could. The Segovia mint was owned by the King's Royal House; but other Spanish mints, which were run by the National Treasury, continued hammered coinage for decades. The Industrial Revolution shifted the focus of the economy from
264-400: A proposed coinage designed by Thomas Simon with Oliver Cromwell 's portrait. The restoration of 1660 ended that, but in 1662 Charles II recalled Blondeau to establish a permanent machine-made coinage. He employed a secret process for placing lettering or other designs on the edges of coins. The inscription chosen for the edge— DECVS ET TVTAMEN , meaning an ornament and a safeguard—refers to
308-631: A rural to an urban, money based, enterprise. The main technology of the Industrial Revolution, the Watt steam engine , also increased the overall level of economic activity. Both of these factors increased the demand for money. Factories were financed by introducing paper money and credit, but low-denomination coins were required to pay their workers and in England copper coins were scarce. Matthew Boulton had backed Watt's development of
352-718: The Bank of England suspended convertibility of its notes for gold. The twopenny coins measured exactly an inch and a half across; 16 pennies lined up would reach two feet. Between 1817 and 1830 the German engineer Dietrich "Diedrich" Uhlhorn invented the Presse Monétaire, a level coin press which became known as the Uhlhorn Press. His steam driven knuckle-lever press made him internationally famous, and over 500 units had been sold by 1840. The advanced construction of
396-674: The Hall mint in Tirol permanently adopted coinage machinery in 1567. Unlike the screw press used in France and England, Hall used a roller press. Here two cylindrical dies impressed designs on bullion which rolled between them. Coins were then cut from the rolled and impressed metal. This technique spread from Hall to Cologne in 1568, Dresden in 1574, Kremnica and Danzig in 1577, as well as other small mints. Its most significant impact occurred when Philip II of Spain used his personal funds to build
440-566: The United States Mint —Mint Director Elias Boudinot found them to be "perfect and beautifully polished". These were the first truly modern coins; the mass-production of coinage with steam driven machinery organised in factories enabled the achievement of standardized dimensions and uniform weight and roundness, something no counterfeiter of the day could hope to achieve. Boulton also pioneered special methods to further frustrate counterfeiters. Designed by Heinrich Küchler ,
484-408: The hammered coinage of Ancient Greece . This was problematic because an increase in the supply of bullion from central Europe and America was overworking mints. That led to low quality coins which were easily forged or clipped , i.e. precious metal was shaved from the edges of the coins. In accordance with Gresham's law , the clipped and forged coins drove good coins out of circulation, depreciating
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#1732776219447528-402: The shogunate was overthrown, the restored Emperor Meiji built a mint at Osaka and imported minting machinery from Birmingham, England for it. Likewise, Spanish Milled Dollars and Mexican pesos became the primary currency used for trade in large parts of southern China during the mid 1800s. China struck similar coins for Turkestan in 1877, and for its own use in 1890. In modern practice in
572-667: The British Royal Mint left the Tower of London and established a new facility on Little Tower Hill. When Spain introduced coinage to America in 1536, coins were still hammered. The fineness of the silver in this coinage was reduced in 1732 and the Mexico City mint began striking the new coins using machinery. Other Spanish American mints followed and their thaler size silver coins are widely known as Spanish Milled Dollars . The Spanish Milled Dollar, and its successor
616-540: The Crown, including the building of the half-moon battery at Edinburgh Castle. The countermark was made the goldsmith James Gray , and can be seen on many placks and hardheads today. In 1575, Morton devalued the currency to its base value to the anger of those still holding it. Regent Morton attempted to revive gold mining in Scotland , and in July 1576 a proclamation was issued, forbidding the sale of gold in Scotland except to
660-714: The Edinburgh Mint produced its last batch of coins at the end of the 1707–1710 Scottish recoinage , although it retained its permanent officials (though not other staff) for a further hundred years, until 1814. The mint was finally abolished in 1817 and sold in 1830. The title of 'Governor of the Mint of Scotland', which passed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Coinage Act 1870 , was finally abolished with
704-591: The Master Coiner, John Acheson . From 1574 until 1707 the mint in Edinburgh was located on the Cowgate at the foot of South Grays Close, east of Cardinal David Beaton 's lodging. The buildings became the property of the mint master Thomas Acheson, and were demolished in 1877. The site, near the Cowgate , is now commemorated by the street name "Coinyie House Close". Minting ceased in Scotland in 1709 when
748-751: The Mexican Peso, were widely used in trade with the Sinosphere , where coins were previously cast. In what is now Vietnam, emperor Minh Mạng introduced a coin based on the Spanish Milled Dollar in 1832. The subsequent French rulers of the area had a coinage based on the Spanish Milled Dollar struck at the Paris mint. Commodore Perry opened Japan to foreign trade, which was mostly paid for in Mexican pesos, in 1853. In 1870, two years after
792-578: The Roman Empire from 260 to 261 AD, and yet he issued two coins bearing his image. Ancient coins were made by casting in moulds or by striking between engraved dies . The Romans cast their larger copper coins in clay moulds carrying distinctive markings, not because they knew nothing of striking, but because it was not suitable for such large masses of metal. Casting is now used only by counterfeiters. The most ancient coins were cast in bulletshaped or conical moulds and marked on one side by means of
836-603: The Uhlhorn press proved to be highly satisfactory, and the use of the screw press for general coinage was gradually eliminated. This new technology was used at the Birmingham Mint , the largest private mint in the world for much of the 19th century, and was further improved at the Taylor and Challen who began to supply complete press room equipment to national mints around the world, such as Sydney Mint , Australia. By
880-400: The billions. With the mass production of currency, the production cost is weighed when minting coins. For example, it costs the United States Mint much less than 25 cents to make a quarter (a 25 cent coin), and the difference in production cost and face value (called seigniorage ) helps fund the minting body. Conversely, a U.S. penny ($ 0.01) cost $ 0.015 to make in 2016. The first mint
924-407: The blank piece of metal laid upon it by hand. The upper die was then placed on the blank, and kept in position by means of a holder around which was placed a roll of lead to protect the hand of the operator while heavy blows were struck with a hammer. An early improvement was the introduction of a tool resembling a pair of tongs, the two dies being placed one at the extremity of each leg. This avoided
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#1732776219447968-522: The capacity to strike between 70 and 84 coins per minute. The firm had little immediate success getting a license to strike British coins, but was soon engaged in striking coins for the British East India Company , Sierra Leone and Russia, while producing high-quality planchets , or blank coins, to be struck by national mints elsewhere. The firm sent over 20 million blanks to Philadelphia, to be struck into cents and half-cents by
1012-461: The cast bars and machines for punching-out round disks from flattened sheets of metal. 8 to 12 men took over from each other every quarter of an hour to maneuver the arms driving the screw which struck the medals. Later, the rolls were driven by horses, mules or water-power. Henry II came up against hostility on the part of the coin makers, so the process was largely discarded in 1585 and only used for coins of small value, medals and tokens. The system
1056-505: The castle, and Regent Morton coined equivalent pieces at Dalkeith Castle . Morton also revived the mint at Holyroodhouse in May 1573, ordering repairs to be made by William MacDowall and moving equipment stored in the palace's south tower to the old mint building. Regent Morton revalued copper or base "black money" coinage, using a countermark of a heart, some at three times its face value, and used this to pay for various building projects for
1100-507: The coiners' establishment would have none of this and within a decade the Moulin des Étuves' ex-employees were finding work in Navarre and England. In England, a 1560 proclamation of Elizabeth I exchanged old debased coins for new pure coins. The Tower Mint added machinery to its hammering for this "great recoinage". Eloy Mestrelle undertook the technology transfer from France, but when
1144-469: The coins featured a raised rim with incuse or sunken letters and numbers. The high-technology of Soho Mint gained increasing and somewhat unwelcome attention: rivals attempted industrial espionage , while lobbying with the Government for Boulton's mint to be shut down. Boulton was finally awarded a contract by the Royal Mint on 3 March 1797, after a national financial crisis reached its nadir when
1188-555: The coins in circulation in Britain were counterfeit, and the Royal Mint responded to this crisis by shutting itself down, worsening the situation. Boulton, business partner of the engineer James Watt in the firm of Boulton & Watt for the manufacture of steam engines , turned his attention to coinage in the mid-1780s as an extension to the small metal products he already manufactured in his factory in Soho . In 1788 he established
1232-488: The control of David's son Henry, Earl of Northumberland , later returned to English control. Under Alexander III (1249–1286) there were 16 mints. In the reign of James IV (1488–1513), the sole mint was located at Edinburgh. After this time, the only other active mint was at Stirling , where bawbees were minted under Queen Mary . Until 1559 a mint was in the grounds of the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. From 1559
1276-542: The currency. Leonardo da Vinci 's notebooks showed there was a better way and Donato Bramante , the architect who made the initial plans for St. Peter's Basilica , developed a screw press to make the lead bullae attached to Papal documents. In 1550, the French ambassador to Augsburg , Charles de Marillac , saw a way for France to get an economic advantage over the Holy Roman Empire when he learned that
1320-410: The dull appearance of their reverse which usually carries only punch marks. The shape and number of these punches varied according to their denomination and weight-standard. Subsequently, the anvil was marked in various ways, and decorated with letters and figures of beasts, and later still the anvil was replaced by a reverse die. The spherical blanks soon gave place to lenticular-shaped ones. The blank
1364-630: The early 20th century, mints were using electrical power to drive rolls, the advantage being that each pair of rolls could be driven independently without the intervention of cumbrous shafting. Milled coinage In numismatics , the term milled coinage (also known as machine-struck coinage ) is used to describe coins which are produced by some form of machine, rather than by manually hammering coin blanks between two dies ( hammered coinage ) or casting coins from dies. Until 1550, coinage techniques used in European mints had not progressed from
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1408-607: The fifth century BCE . At about the same time, coins and mints appeared independently in China and spread to Korea and Japan. The manufacture of coins in the Roman Republic , dating from about the 4th century BCE, significantly influenced the later development of coin minting in Europe. The origin of the word "mint" is ascribed to the manufacture of silver coin at the temple of Juno Moneta in 269 BCE Rome. This goddess became
1452-537: The flattened sheets were then cut out with shears , struck between dies and again trimmed with shears. A similar method had been used in Ancient Egypt during the Ptolemaic Kingdom (c. 300 BC), but had been forgotten. Square pieces of metal were also cut from cast bars, converted into round disks by hammering and then struck between dies. In striking, the lower die was fixed into a block of wood, and
1496-469: The great recoinage ended, mint authorities found him redundant and in 1578 he was hanged for counterfeiting. In 1632, Charles I employed another French refugee, Nicholas Briot , to improve coinage standards in both England and Scotland, which had its own coinage until 1707 , but the English Civil War ended his machine coinage. Yet another Frenchman, Peter Blondeau , provided machinery for
1540-459: The inventor was identified with a codename, but he was most likely Marx Schwab. Aubin Olivier went to Augsburg to learn the technique and Henry II of France made him chief engineer of a mechanized mint in Paris, called the Moulin des Étuves, on 27 March 1551. This mint produced well-struck and perfectly round gold and silver coins. Having perfectly round coins made it easy to detect clipping, but
1584-532: The mint was located within the confines of Edinburgh Castle for security reasons. In 1571, the principal officers of the mint were; David Forrest, General; Andrew Henderson, Warden; David Adamson, Counter-Warden; James Mosman , Assayer, and his replacement Thomas Acheson; James Gray , Sinker of the dies or coining irons; John Acheson , Master coiner. During the Marian Civil War and "lang siege" of Edinburgh Castle, James Cockie minted silver coins in
1628-439: The necessity of readjusting the dies between blows, and ensured greater accuracy in the impression. Minting by means of a falling weight (monkey press ) intervened between the hand hammers and the screw press in many places. In Birmingham in particular this system became highly developed and was long in use. In 1553, the French engineer Aubin Olivier introduced screw presses for striking coins, together with rolls for reducing
1672-416: The passing of the Coinage Act 1971 . Mint (coin) The history of mints correlates closely with the history of coins . In the beginning, hammered coinage or cast coinage were the chief means of coin minting, with resulting production runs numbering as little as the hundreds or thousands. In modern mints, coin dies are manufactured in large numbers and planchets are made into milled coins by
1716-499: The personification of money, and her name was applied both to money and to its place of manufacture. Roman mints were spread widely across the Empire , and were sometimes used for propaganda purposes. The populace often learned of a new Roman Emperor when coins appeared with the new Emperor's portrait . Some of the emperors who ruled only for a short time made sure that a coin bore their image; Quietus , for example, ruled only part of
1760-593: The protection against clipping which the lettered edge provided. In accordance with Gresham's law, however, the inferior hammered coins limited the circulation of his coins until the hammered coins were demonetized in 1695. Meanwhile, in continental Europe, France readopted machine made coins in 1639. Both machine-made and hammered coins continued through the recoinage of French silver in 1641, but by now machine-made coinage's time had come, and hammered French coinage ended in 1645. Zürich and Heidelberg experimented with coinage machinery in 1558 and 1567 respectively, and
1804-575: The steam engine, and he used it to power coin-making machinery at his Soho Manufactory . Boulton struck coins for the East India Company, supplied steam powered coining machinery to the Moscow mint, and manufactured private tokens which circulated widely in England. In 1797, Boulton received a contract to strike royal British copper coins called cartwheels . In 1805, he received a further contract to supply steam powered coinage machinery when
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1848-486: Was likely established in Lydia in the 7th century BC, for coining gold, silver and electrum . The Lydian innovation of manufacturing coins under the authority of the state spread to neighbouring Greece , where a number of city-states operated their own mints. Some of the earliest Greek mints were within city-states on Greek islands such as Crete ; a mint existed at the ancient city of Cydonia on Crete at least as early as
1892-537: Was made red-hot and struck between cold dies. One blow was usually insufficient, and the method was similar to that still used in striking medals in high relief, except that the blank is now allowed to cool before being struck. With the substitution of iron for bronze as the material for dies, about 300 AD, the practice of striking the blanks while they were hot was gradually discarded. In the Middle Ages bars of metal were cast and hammered out on an anvil. Portions of
1936-559: Was reintroduced into France by Jean Varin in 1640 and the practice of hammering was forbidden in 1645. In England the new machinery was tried in London in 1561, but abandoned soon afterwards; it was finally adopted in 1662, although the old pieces continued in circulation until 1696. Industrial techniques and steam-power were introduced to coin manufacture by industrialist Matthew Boulton in Birmingham in 1788. By 1786, two-thirds of
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