handed me a common sulphur-tipped match, 80 then 

 took up a small rod of copper, told me to feel that it 

 was cold, held its end on an anvil, and struck it a few 

 quick sharp blows with a hammer, then applied it to 

 the match which I held in my hand, which to my 

 amazement was at once ignited; he said, now you 

 have something to think about and may be able to 

 understand when you are older; it was an object 

 lesson that led to many a train of thought. 



When years after in speaking of it to my mother's 

 father, Charles Willson Peale, he took up an old file 

 of letters and sorted out a number from Benjamin 

 Thompson (Count Rumford) and read from them 

 many passages descriptive of his wonderful experi- 

 ments and researches into the nature of heat, and its 

 generation by friction or percussion, that have since 

 been so beautifully illustrated and enlarged on by 

 Prof. John Tyndall in his work on "'Heat as a Mode 

 of Motion," and by Joule on the "Correlation of 

 Forces," after a lapse of over half a century. 90 . . . 



The little yard in the rear of the old mint was a 

 very attractive place to us youngsters [with] its great 

 piles of cord wood, which by the barrow load was 

 wheeled into the furnace room and thrust full size 

 in the boiler furnace, which to my young eyes ap- 

 peared to be the hottest place on earth. There 

 almost dailv was to be seen great lattice-sided wagons 

 of charcoal being unloaded, and the fuel stacked 

 under a shed to be used in the melting and the an- 

 nealing furnaces. 



As I grew older and better able to understand, 

 my interest in all the various processes increased, 

 from the fuel yard to the melting room to see the 

 pots or crucibles charged with the metals and their 

 fluxes placed in the furnaces and the fires started, 

 and when melted to see the man with his cage- 

 jawed grasping tongs lift the crucible out of the 

 fiery furnace and pour the melted metal into the 

 ins;ot molds. Then the rolling these ingots into 

 strips of sheet metal, splitting and turning them into 

 narrow strips by revolving cutting shears. Thinning 

 or pointing the end of the strips by rollers with 

 flatted spaces on them, so that the strips can lie in- 

 serted between the regulated and fixed dies of the 



draw-bench to equalize their thickness as they are 

 seized by a pair of nippers or gripping tongs, the 

 hooked handle of which the operator at once engages 

 in a link of the constantly traveling chain by which 

 the strip is drawn through, between the dies, the 

 operator then by hand pushed the grippers back 

 into place to take a grip on another strip. These 

 strips were fed by hand into the planchet cutting-out 

 presses, and it required practice to attain the adroit- 

 ness to so handle the strips to cut them out to the 

 best advantage so as to leave the least metal to be 

 returned to the melting pots. Silver planchets by 

 the rolling and drawing process become too hard 

 for coining without first annealing. 



Then the hand-milling press was a very interesting 

 one to watch, it was raising and notching or letterins; 

 the rim of the planchet as a preventive against clipping 

 or robbing. This was done by rolling between 

 grooved and notched parallel rulers or bars, one 

 being fixed, the other movable endways by a pinion 

 working into a rack. The operator after placing 

 two planchets one in advance of the other between 

 the parallel bars, then by a partial turn of a hand- 

 crank the movable bar is thrust ahead sufficiently 

 to entirely rotate the planchets, when they are 

 taken out and two others put in. 



Everv gold and silver planchet as cut out was passed 

 through the hands of an adjuster; if overweight 

 reduced by a file, a leather pouch in front of his 

 bench catching the filings; if too light they were 

 returned to the melter. 



I have no recollection of ever having seen the copper 

 planchets for cents being made in the mint, but I 

 have a vivid recollection of small iron hooped casks 

 filled with copper planchets for cents and half cents. 

 I have the impression that they were imported as 

 copper in that condition and only stamped or coined 

 in the mint. 91 These casks were similar to the casks 

 in which card wire was imported from England at 

 that period. My object in giving these notes of opera- 



89 This is not an anachronism. "Common matches, which 



arc in daily use for lighting fires, derive then principal utility 



from being tipped with sulphur" ("Sulphur," in Abraham Rees, 



The C) lopaedia, London. 1819, vol. 36. This volume was pub- 



1 in 1816). 



1 lid be remembered that Charles Willson Peale died 

 in [827. 



91 The copper planchets were in fact imported for more than 

 ■jo years from Matthew Boulton works in Birmingham. England. 

 In 1796, when negotiations for furnishing the planchets were 

 under way, Boulton would have preferred to mint the pennies 

 complete in his works for £140 per ton, of which £21 per 

 ton was for minting. However, he consented to supply the 

 planchets while pointing out that "there is an art in the an- 

 nealing, without which, were the Copper rolled ever so fine, 

 the surface would be injured, but these are things I am perfectly 

 master of, and have an excellent Rolling Mill and every other 

 convenience, besides which I am concerned in many Copper 

 Mines and a partner in a Copper Smelting Works . . . ." 



66 



