Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-04-15
MAKERS OF MONEY.
Tho Largest Mint lin the World at Bir-
 lningham, Eng.

Mfigham, Eng.
 It is by TO means generally known that an appreci.ble proportion of our bronze and silver coins at present in circulation never saw the dies of the Royal mint on Tower hill, but are mako in Birmingham, says the Pall Mall Gazette.
 Have you never noticed a little letter H on some of the pennies you have had from time to time in your handsa This is the superscription of Messrs. Ralph Heaton 6 Sons, the proprietors of the Birmingham mint. The grandfather of the present Ralph Heaton who invented the hot shot used at the siege of Gibraltar was pointed out hy General Elliott as ''the man who saved Gibraltar" Money has been made in Bir- mingham for 8 long time back. Matthew Boulton issued a large quantity of the old fashioned copper coinage, and in 1850 the HeatonS bought the machinery of the Soho works when it was sold. Of course. the machinery which they use at present IS es- sentiSlly modern and of their own construc- ton. So successful has it been that they have supplied all the now used presses to the royal mint, and have entirely fitted up l the brand-new imperial mint that the Chinese Government has recently gone in ! for, and as this establishment covers more than six acres of ground, and will contain ninety presses, while our own Tower hill mint can number only sixteen, the impor- tance of the work may be understood The new Chinese mint is, ind eed, the largest in ! the world. But Messrs. Heaton have made 1 money for nearly every civilized and un- ! civilized country. Every colony has had money from Birmingham. Among foreign orders may be mentioned between 5000 and l 4,0OO tons of Quarter-annas for India.
 ! As to the coming trade, it may be briefly | said that money making is very much like ! button making. You prepare your metal l and stamp it out and there you are i'll either l case. The chef difference between the two l industries appears to be that, while there Is l a demand for buttons all the year round, 1 coining necessarily proceeds in series or l tbursts." At the mint the visitor is first l shown the stores. In the bronze depart 1 ment there were some twenty tons of cop
 per ingots piled up and about as much l metal for alloy, and a good deal of rolled | copper. The intrinsic value of coin varies l according to the country. Our coinage Is | about the best. The bronze is made from l ninety-fve per cent. of copper, four per | cent. of tin and one per cent of zinc. The l silver contains 9.25 of silver to 1.15 of cop l per. The copper and silver stores and ] weighing out departments are kept sepa- | rate, one metal being of more value than 1 the other, and it being necessary to be moro l exact in the case of tho bronze than in that | of the silver coins. The process through
 which the metal goes from which bronze
 coins are struck is simple. First, 1t Is
 melted up in crucibles; second, 1t is formed into bars by means of the moulds into
 which it is poured; third, it is rolled; fourth, it is heated to soften it; fifth, it is thrown
 into cold water, by which means 1t
 IS prevented from cracking when, sixth, it is again rolled; seventh, the copper
 strips are dropped into diluted acid
 baths in order to be cleaned; eighth, they are rolled again. The strips arc then taken
 to the cutting-out machine, in which, the metal being inserted, the blanks are rapid ly and automatically struck out. In the room where this is done-a peculiar small
 coin for the East was being cut out during
 my visit-there are blanks all about the
 floor Trampling over them, the visitor mo-
 tices little machine into which two girls push blanks through 8 tube as fast as they
 can crush them in. This apparatus mills the edges of the blanks, and, when they
 have been milled, they arc ready to be an- ) healed The arnealing is done by placing
 the blanks in air-tght pots and putting the pots into a furnace. On being emptied out
 of the pots tho blanks are black and scaly
 An acid bath and a good rubbing in re
 yolving barrel half full of sawdust soon polishes them, however, and they are then ready to receive the impress of the dies The metal which is made into silver coins practically goes through the same process In weighing the copper blanks (by the hun dred) more ''tolerance' is, of course, per
 mitted than could beDallowed in tho case o' silver coins. The annealing to which the
 coins are subjected is done to make then less brittle, and, therefore, more likely tt take the impress of the dies properly. Tt } ascertain when the rolled-out metal ha: } reached the requisite thinness, one blank l: , struck from the middle of each silver stril 3 and weighed. The copper strips are judged , simply by gauge.
 , It is much easier to coin silver and copper , than gold. A bit of copper or silver lost, ol few blanks unaccounted for, do not make 3 much difference, but the smallest loss o1 gold is more or less serious matter. Ever
 when the commoner metals are being mintee
 the men have to account for what is en
 trusted to them, and they stand on grating: that metal may not stick to their boots, ant ', in certain parts of the money factory the. | are not allowed out from morning till night ] their dinners being brought to them.
 U As has been said, the pieces are no
 weighed singly, but in quantities. Th'
 process of impressing the inscription ol
 both sides of the blanks Is superlativel.
 simple ono where modern machinery IS con
 cerned. A dozen large coining presses, on' ', the biggest in the world, stand together . in one room. Each machine is furnished n with brass tube like the mouth of an of 7 7 fice-speaking pipe, and into the aperture 1T
 question girls simply drop the blanks a: " quickly as they like. The almost nolseles:
 machine is quite automatic; the blanks art
 quietly pushed by it one by one between tht
 obverse and the reverse dies, the dies come 5 together, and the blanks move on ane - smartly rattle down a tube into bo,
 placed to catch them. The biggest press i!
 suffici ently powerful to have stamped sucl
 large affairs as the jubilee medals, whicl
 are three inches in diameter When th'
 blanks have been converted into coins b. d the dies they are, for easier and more cer [. tain inspection and for counting, spread on r on sscounting boards" which have exactl.
 a hundred holes. When finally passed, the. y are packed into strong boxes or barrels. j. Surgical Operation on a Nose.
 New Works fashionable world is gossip