The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-14
UNCLE SAM A MONEY MAKER.

Interesting Machines Used in the
 Government Mints-A Million Pen
 nies a Dal
 4 million pennies a day-that is the capacity of a strange machine which Uncle Sam uses in the Philadelphia mint to count the coin of smallest va lue made by this government. The machine. known as a counting table, Is exhibited in the government building as a part of Uncle Sam's $S00,00O dis play on the peninsula in Guilds Lake at the Lewis and Clark Exposition.
 The counting board is about as large as a big kneading board such as house wives use. The surface of it is wide enough to hold a row of forty pennies. When the pennies are to be counted several thousand are heaped onto the board, which is placed above hopper. Then an operator tips the board back ward and forward and sideways so that the pennies slide about, and final ly settle in the groves made by the brass partition strips. When the board is full there are 1000 pennies on it. It is then dumped into a receptacle just outside the hopper and the pen nies which have slipped off the board into the hopper are caught by a box underneath. Pennies are coined at the Philadelphia mint and the government finds the coining of them profitable, because the value of the metal they contain is only about three-fourths of ! a cent.
 The upsetting machine is another in- teresting mechanical contrivance. It is | used for turning the edges of coins.
 The coin disks of the proper size and l thickness, but with their edges still ] rough, are put into tubes made to fit
 them. These tubes are placed upright
 beside a round topped, revolving table.
 At each revolution of the table one of
 the disks drops into a grove between | the table and an outer shell, and the pressure on the edges of the disks
 makes them smooth.
 Stamping the coin is the last process,
 and this is done by means of great
 machine which weighs fifteen tons and ! costs $15,000 There are twenty-four such machines in the Philadelphia mint The disks which are to be coins are placed in a tube, as in the case of the
 
 take hold of the bottom disk and move it over the die. Then the die above presses down on the disk so that the impression is made on both sides. At the same time the edges of the disk are milled, and when the upper die raises the steel fingers push the f1n- ished coin out of the way and bring disk into position. The machine at the Portland Exposi- tion, which is used in stamping $20 gold pieces, has capacity of ninety a minute. A pressure of 1S0 tons is ne- | cessary to stamp silver dollar, but 13O tons pressure will stamp double eagle. Smaller coins require less pres sure.
 In connection with the exhibit at the Western Worlds Fair coins of this years make in all denominations ex- cept the silver dollar are displayed. None of the hints is now coining dol lars, because the government has on hand 600,OOO,O0O, which are being held for the purpose of redeeming silver certificates. There is also on eXhibi- tion at Portland the first coining press ever used by the United States gov ernment--a crude machine, which was operated by hand and was used in 1793 for making copper pennies.-Chi- cago Chronicle.