First Coinage presses

[jlueke]

When were the first coin presses used?

The first screw, steam, and hydraulic presses?

[frank]

From a nice site at the Université de Poitiers: Histoire de la Monnaie

 

We owe the invention of the screw press to a German jeweler, Marx Schwab, around 1550.

 

Henri II (1547-1559) imposed this new technique in France, while importing new machines for preparing the planchet. 8 to 12 men worked in 15-minute shifts to turn the arms to operate the press.

 

With the screw press, it became possible to make 30 coins of even quality in one minute. There was opposition initially from the guilds of skilled coin-makers, whose sole income derived from their ability to produce high-quality hammered coins. For this reason the use of the screw press remained initially limited. Not until the reign of Louis XIV [1660-1715] do we see--under the influence of the royal engraver Jean Warin--the widespread use of this method in all French mint sites.

[jlueke]

Thanks Frank. I've read that as well. I've also read in some places, but not all that the screw press was used in England under Elizabeth but then removed after a few years due to the influence of the moneyers. I'd like to find some resources that demonstrate confirmed strikes by srew press in the 16th century in France, England, and the German States.

 

Someone must have written about this

[constanius]

Mestrelle's Coinage Elizabeth I milled sixpence 1567 Milled coins were minted for the first time in England in 1561, in the reign of Elizabeth I. A screw press powered by horses was used in their manufacture, under the supervision of a Frenchman, Eloye Mestrelle. First English screw press

 

1530 Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini invents a screw-based stamping press to mint coins.

 

Around 1508, the Forentine artist, Bramante, struck medals in a screw-press and some 30 years later another Florentine, Benvenuto Cellini, used a similar press to strike small coins. Around 1555, several screw-presses were installed in the Paris Mint. This new mechanical technology did not achieve wide spread acceptance due to protests of coiners which was a typical attitude toward industrial innovation which exists even today by workers who fear loosing their jobs to a machine.

 

Another type of mechanical coining apparatus was devised by Leonardo daVinci (1452-1519), whose notebooks show a drawing of the first example we know depicting a coin rolling-mill. This type of machine, coupled to a waterwheel (although they were also driven by horses) pressed the coin design onto a strip of metal which passed between two roller-dies. These machines allowed for production of coins with much larger diameters since the mechanical force was applied to a narrow band of the coin's surface which progressively advanced as the strip moved between the dies instead of being applied to the entire coin surface all at once as in the hammer-struck or screw-press methods. These new coining mills spread in usage during the mid-sixteenth century to various mints in the central European region of Germany, Austria and Hungary which were controlled by the Hapsburg family, whose dominion also included Spain.

 

It's worth mentioning that the German city of Augsburg had one of the most mechanically advanced mints of the entire world in the sixteenth century; which is, of course, where the printing press was invented one century earlier. Indeed this was the heart of world technological advancement in those days. The manufacture of coinage was still the most sophisticated "complex" industry that existed then and this new mechanical procedure was only known in Europe. The rest of the civilized world only knew "simple" or artisan industries which were generally not mechanized except for the milling of grains.From this web site

 

Steam Coin Press

[jlueke]

Would one be able to tell from looking the difference between a hand struck versus press struck coin?

[constanius]

Would one be able to tell from looking the difference between a hand struck versus press struck coin?

 

Pressed coins normally have flat fields, a lack of flow lines, no doubling, no slippage, uniform strike (no flat areas), uniform thickness and perfectly round. Often these coins are also very well centered and most importantly tend to have milled edges to prevent clipping.

 

Striking by hand (particularly silver and with heated flans) results in metal flow lines, doubling, slippage, irregular strike and thickness etc

 

Compare Mestrelle's Elizabeth I milled sixpence 1567 with the hammered elizabethan coins. The Mestrelle's coin looks like modern coinage, the hammered, medieval.

 

Pressed coins are individually very alike, hard to tell one from the other. Conversely hammered are more varied, struck off-centre, weakly struck, or well struck, double struck, misaligned obverse & reverse etc and unmilled edges.

 

Obviously if the planchet is irregular shape and of uneven thickness then even struck coins can share some of the features of hammered coins.

 

If you have an individual well struck hammered it could appear to be pressed (minus a milled edge), but if you had a number of the same hammered coin the differences between each of them individually should enable them to identified as hammered.

 

Very interesting questions.

[jlueke]

It would be interesting to get some images together from major mints in the 16th and 17th centuries and place them chronologically. The time of the chage-over should then be fairly apparent. Especially for lower denominations that didn't get as much care with the hammer.

 

I don't suppose the same would work for steam powered presses, though by then the mint records probably exist

[just carl]

It would be interesting to get some images together from major mints in the 16th and 17th centuries and place them chronologically. The time of the chage-over should then be fairly apparent. Especially for lower denominations that didn't get as much care with the hammer.

Yes it would be interesting to see some of those. Makes me wonder why no one took photos of those presses.

[frank]

1575 teston of Charles IX, hammer-struck:

 

vs. 1578 jeton of the French Mint, screw press:

 

Most jetons of this period--up to the reign of Louis XIII, starting in 1610-- seem to have been screw-press minted; most coinage was hammer-struck. My copy of Gadoury shows hammer-struck coinage through the 1630's, switching over to screw-press in the 1640's. Here's a double tournois of Louis XIII from 1643, screw press:

[jlueke]

Cool, nice contrast.