228 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



President of the Academy, appears not to be quite accurate. If 

 it be so, it may indicate that the views of the Secretary of the 

 Treasury and the Director of the Mint were not entirely in 

 accord regarding the cent coinage. The latter in his report for 

 1864 remarks: " During the past year some interesting experi- 

 ments were made with aluminum as an alloy for coins; not with 

 a view to displace the bronze coinage, but to propose a system 

 of tokens for five and ten cents." " It is not surprising that the 

 Director of the Mint should not have contemplated a change in 

 the bronze coinage at that date, as the Government had just 

 adopted bronze one cent and two cent pieces, more than 

 42,000,000 of the former and about 2,000,000 of the latter having 

 been coined in 1864. It would seem that the idea was not at all 

 to displace these new and popular coins, but rather to determine 

 the properties of aluminum bronzes, particularly with a view 

 of employing them for other forms of currency. The experi- 

 ments were suggested by certain claims put forward in France 

 that a small percentage of aluminum added to silver would 

 prevent the latter from tarnishing when exposed to fumes con- 

 taining sulphur, while at the same time forming an alloy of con- 

 siderable hardness. 



While the committee had the subject under consideration an 

 article on aluminum bronzes was published by Moreau,^" and it 

 was found that he had fully covered all the points regarding the 

 characteristics of those alloys which the committee was to investi-. 

 gate. The proceedings were on this account confined simply to 

 preparing a bar of aluminum bronze, and having coins struck 

 from it at the mint in order to ascertain to what extent the alloy 

 was suitable for coinage. The bar was prepared by Joseph 

 Saxton, a member of the Academy, and transmitted by Joseph 

 Henry to the Director of the Mint, who in turn placed it in the 



"Rep. Dir. of the Mint in Rep. Seer. Treas. for 1864, p. 214. House Exec. Doc. no. 3, 

 38th Congress, 2d Session. 



" Moreau, G. Ueber die Eigenschaften der Aluminiumbronze. (Aus Armengaud's 

 Genie industriel, December, 1863, S. 291; durch das polytechnische Centralblatt, 1864, S. 

 312.) I'olyteihnisches Journal, Herausgegeben von Dr. Emil Maximilian Dingier, vol. 171, 

 1864, pp. 434-442- 



