A brief history of the origin of coins

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

We hold them in our hands every day, but mostly we only pay attention to numbers. Meanwhile, coins are not just money, but also a cultural phenomenon, living evidence of the history of the technological development of mankind.

The exchange of products of labor originated in primitive society and developed with the development of human society and the division of labor. Some goods were more widespread and were in steady demand in different inhabited corners of our planet, and gradually the cost of all other goods began to be equated to their value. This is how “commodity-money” appeared.

For pastoralists, livestock became the measure of total value, which was later reflected in the language: among the ancient population of Italy, money was denoted by the word pecunia (from the Latin pecus, cattle). In Ancient Russia, the word "cattle" also meant money, and "cowgirl", respectively, meant the treasury, treasure.

The next stage was the emergence of more convenient for handling similar items of natural or artificial origin. For the ancient inhabitants of the coastal regions of Asia and Africa, these were the shells of sea mollusks. For many nomadic pastoralists, branded pieces of leather played the role of money. In Russia, in Poland, among the Germanic tribes - the fur of wild animals. The name of the Old Russian currency "kuna" is etymologically associated with marten, marten fur.

Metal ingots of various shapes and sizes became a transitional link from “commodity-money” to coins. In ancient Greece, these were metal rods - obol. Six such rods made up a drachma (handful).

The word "drachma" has survived to this day as the name of the Greek currency. In ancient Germany, there were lozenge-shaped ingots (Gusskuchen), in Russia - hexagonal or rectangular silver ingots. In large commercial transactions, they were used entirely, but more often they were cut into pieces, which became the progenitors of small change.

Silver obol. Athens, after 449 BC e.

In the XII century BC. AD in China, and then in the 7th century BC. the first coins made of metal appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean. The word "coin" itself appeared later - in ancient Rome. The first Roman mint was located at the temple of Juno Moneta (Juno the Counselor), hence the name of all its products. In Russia, the word "coin" came into use during the time of Peter I, replacing the words "money" and "kuna".

Hand money

Each coin has a front side (obverse) and a back side (reverse). The obverse is the side with the image of the ruler or containing the legend (inscription), which allows to determine the nationality of the coin. On modern coins, the obverse is usually considered to be the side with the denomination designation. The side surface of a coin is called a rim.

Initially, the milling was smooth, later, in order to combat counterfeiters and damage to coins (cutting off the edges in order to steal precious metals), patterns and inscriptions began to be applied to it, first by hand, and then using gourmet machines.

The first coins (Chinese, antique, ancient Roman) were made by casting. They were cast into molds in several pieces at once, so some coins bear traces of lithics - remnants of metal trapped in the channels between the molds. The coins of that time were distinguished by their large thickness and rounded convex drawings and inscriptions. Among them, in addition to round, there are specimens of an oval, bean, and sometimes spherical shape.

The next stage was the manual minting of coins from cast circles. The lower stamp was fixed in the anvil and also served to hold the coin mug. The upper one was fastened in a hammer, the coin was made with one blow.

If the force of the impact was insufficient, the operation had to be repeated, and the image was usually slightly displaced. In ancient Greece, coins were often made with a single stamp and carried the image on only one side. On the second side, traces of forceps or rods were imprinted with which the workpiece was held.

The development of the coin business led to the division of labor and the improvement of the process. The production of coins during this period took place in several stages. First, a thin metal plate was made with a hammer (from the 15th century, a flattening mill was used for this). Then the workpiece was cut out with scissors, and then with the help of stamps (thick rods with an image engraved on the end face) and a hammer, minting was carried out.

In princely Russia, a different technology was used. The silver wire was cut into even pieces, from which thin small coins of irregular oval shape were minted by hand, which became widespread in the Russian principalities. "Scales" (this name was generally accepted) existed in Russia until the monetary reform of Peter I, who called them "old lice" and replaced them with the familiar round coins of high quality.

The fruits of automation

Leonardo da Vinci invented an apparatus that punched out metal mugs with a press and minted coins with a hammer shell. It was a log with a stamp embedded in it, which was lifted on a block with leather straps and fell down under its own weight. Using this technology, it was possible to print a large silver coin that was circulating in Europe at that time. Chasing became even more perfect after the invention of the screw press in Augsburg in the middle of the 16th century. The stamp was attached to the bottom of the screw, driven by levers.

A little later, a machine for applying patterns on the edge appeared, and with the invention of the split ring in the 16th century, it became possible to apply inscriptions on the edge. For the first time, the edge inscription appeared on the French ecu in 1577.

In 1786, the Swiss Pierre Droz invented a machine that operated on the principle of a screw press driven by a steam engine with automatic feeding of coin circles.

In 1810-1811, the Russian engineer Ivan Afanasyevich Nevedomsky described and built a prototype of a stamping machine with a cranked lever, which made it possible to switch to modern coinage with a capacity of up to 100 coins per minute. Alas, the machine did not find recognition in Russia, and in 1813 the inventor died.

In 1817, the German mechanic Dietrich Ulgorn presented a machine similar to that of Nevedomsky. As usual, “there are no prophets in their own country”: in 1840 Ulgorn machines were installed at the St. Petersburg Mint.

Modern money

Regular gold coinage in Russia began under Peter I and continued until the fall of the Romanov dynasty. In Soviet Russia, in 1923, a gold duct was minted with the image of a peasant sower on the obverse. The coin was used for international payments of the young Soviet republic.

In the 1970s, a substantial batch of souvenir remakes of this coin was made in the USSR while maintaining the appearance, weight and fineness. Today, these coins are used as investment coins and are sold by a number of banks on a par with similar coins from other countries - Great Britain (gold sovereign), France (napoleon, gold coin in denomination of 20 francs).

The stamps for the production of the Soviet chervonets were made by medalist A. F. Vasyutinsky is the author of the last coins of Tsarist Russia and silver coins of Soviet Russia. By the way, in 1931, the same master made a model of the famous TRP badge ("Ready for Labor and Defense").

There are cases in history of the production of coins from metals rare for coin making. From 1828 to 1845, platinum coins were minted in Russia in denominations of 3, 6 and 12 rubles.

These unusual denominations appeared due to the then prices for platinum (12 times more expensive than silver): a 12-ruble platinum coin was equal in weight and size to a silver ruble, 6 and 3 rubles - respectively a half and 25 kopecks. There is an opinion that platinum coins were minted thanks to the Demidov merchants, who had great connections at the imperial court. A lot of platinum was found in their mines, which at that time had no industrial application.

In the first half of the 20th century, nickel coins were minted in a number of countries (including the USSR - 10, 15 and 20 kopecks in 1931-1934). Later, almost everywhere, they were replaced by cheaper coins of copper-nickel alloy and aluminum bronze. In Nazi Germany and a number of other countries, a small change coin was produced from an alloy based on zinc, which is characterized by poor chemical resistance and fragility.

By the middle of the last century, most countries abandoned money from precious metals, using gold and silver only for commemorative and collection coins. The main coin metals were copper-nickel and bronze alloys, as well as aluminum and iron clad with copper, bronze or nickel.

Bimetallic coins appeared - made of two metals (as a rule, from a copper-nickel alloy with a bronze center) - 500 Italian lira, a number of Russian coins, 2 euros.

With the introduction of the single European currency, a new direction appeared in the minting of coins. Metallic euros and euro cents have a single design, but they are minted in different countries and retain their national characteristics. And although many Europeans recall their national currencies and coins with nostalgia, everyone understands that the time of metallic money is irrevocably a thing of the past, and electronic and virtual money is replacing it.

And yet metallic money will remain in museum collections and in the collections of numismatists as a monument to the material culture of mankind, its vices and passions, and of course - advanced engineering.