Could you name the presidents associated with each denomination of American currency? If so, you’re above the level of people who sell old silver 10 cent pieces as “Eisenhower dimes”. As it turns out, the only circulation-issue coinage to bear the image of Ike was a the last of the large dollars, issued in the 1970s at the size of the traditional silver dollar – the same coin that commemorated the moon landings, ironically enough. This history is all well and good, but there’s technology and social change behind it.
The first coin issued by the United States federal government was struck in 1793. It was a Chain Cent, so called because of the reverse design of a chain symbolizing the mutual bond of the new states. The obverse (front) bore an image of Lady Liberty, a theme that stretches throughout American history. It was struck on a screw press using hand-cut dies (dies are the inverted images of a coin that are pressed into a blank planchet to “strike” it). This was better than the medieval technology of using two dies, a collar, and a hammer, but the party was just getting started inside the US mint.
During the 1830s, the mint got a new toy. It ended up characterizing most of US numismatic history. This was the steam press. The first such press ever used is owned by the Franklin Institute, if that’s relevant. Dies were made from hubs by now – a high-relief image of the design to be struck that was used to make individual dies that then had minor details like stars and the date hand-punched in. The hub was originally cut several times larger than the coin, and a reducing wheel was used to make the actual-sized hub.
In 1857, there was more big news. Congress had agreed that the mint was ready to supply the entire country’s demand for currency. This meant a handful of things; the mint no longer had to compete with foreign currencies that had been legal tender in the US until that point, it would no longer produce the half-cent (it was worth too little to make – approximately 13 cents today, adjusted for inflation), and it would have to reduce the size of the one cent piece to avoid taking the loss due to the metal being worth more than the coin on an even larger scale. So the half-cent died, the one cent piece was reduced from the size of a quarter to the size you know today, and America was “financially independent”.
The US wasn’t quite done with odd denominations, though. In 1851, in order to make purchase of a 3 cent stamp more convenient than using 3 of the boulder-sized one cent pieces, congress decreed the invention of the three cent silver, or “trime”, as it would come to be known. In 1851 there was a half cent, cent, trime, half dime, dime, quarter, half dollar, and dollar. To get a feel for how ridiculously small the trime was, imagine a modern dime, half it in every dimension to get to the size of a half dime (not a nickel, by the way), and then take 3/5s of that for the trime. Wild. In 1864, when the price of the postage stamp was reduced to 2 cents, it made sense to roll out the 2 cent piece, a masterpiece. This was also the first coin to bear the motto “in God we trust”. With the trime wildly unpopular, the first nickel piece was issued in its stead – a 3 cent nickel.
But wait, there’s more! By 1867, the 3 cent nickel had fallen out of favor and the half dime was losing money on seigniorage, so out with the half dime and in with the Shield nickel (a fairly unpopular design). Perhaps the most spectacularly strange denomination was the 20 cent piece. Inspired as an attempt to begin implementing a fractional coinage system based on 5ths in the 1870s, it was inconveniently similar in size to the quarter and fell out of favor very quickly as well. In the 1880s, the era of Charles Barber’s coin designs began, giving way in the 19-teens to new designs but little functional change (Granted, the Standing Liberty Quarter of 1917-1930 had to be completely overhauled twice in order to prevent poor wearing of the coins).
American numismatic policy changes tend to coincide with war. Or, America is always in a war. One or the other. But in 1943, in the midst of the second world war, the federal government had a brilliant idea. In order to conserve copper for the production of bullets to shoot Nazis with, the one cent piece was to be made from a zinc-coated steel planchet. This required several practical changes to the minting process, including much higher striking pressures. It also made vending machine companies very angry, because it changed the weight for the coins the machines measured and had the audacity to be magnetic. It lasted only a year and was less popular than even the trime.
By 1960, most European countries had stopped using the silver standard, and the US didn’t want to be alone. Multiple constraints were at play – the mint needed a malleable material to work with that was inexpensive in terms of metal content and not significantly different in weight or appearance from previous issues. Ultimately, the clad (read: “sandwich”) coins you know were chosen. Still, there was the problem of Gresham’s law. Good money drives bad money out of circulation, so the coins with no silver were expected to force the old silver issues out of the money supply and into private piles. This occurred at a much reduced rate due to backdating new silver coinage (a rare thing – federal law requires coins to bear the date in which they are struck under normal circumstances) and the similar appearance of the new coins to the old.
I think I’ll wrap up this brief and incredibly simplistic history of the technologies that the US mint has employed for means of exchange with the 1982 introduction of the “Zincoln”, a one cent piece that is over 95% zinc. Since then, compositions and shapes have remained largely similar (with the exception of the introduction of “gold dollars” that aren’t at all gold). The big changes in coinage tech have occurred mostly in non-circulating issues since then (See: Reverse Proof silver bullion), but the future is bright. One of these days, when the mint stops making money on issuing one and five cent pieces, they’ll get axed. When the states that lobby for paper money finally lose out, we’ll also cut the dollar bill and the dollar coins will reign supreme. You can expect lower relief (flatter coins) and cheaper metals too (but the mint makes 13 cents in seigniorage on every quarter, so far), and we haven’t even addressed the ever-increasing volume of security technologies going into paper currencies. It’s a beautiful numismatic world out there! The norm is change when it comes to your change, and I hope you’ll appreciate both artistic and technological innovations in the future.