Automatic Weighing at the Royal Mint. ■ 77 



almost occult causes which affect the weight of coins ; in- 

 equalities will exist between planchets of gold and silver though 

 cut mathematically of the same dimensions, and all that can be 

 done is to minimize the variations. Probably this object has 

 been accomplished more completely in the British Mint than in 

 any other mint in the world, and the legal "remedy" for 

 imperfect manipulation is smaller there than in any other exist- 

 ing money manufactory. 



The standard of fineness is a point to which reference has 

 been made, and upon which it may be well to add a few further 

 observations. A parallel difiiculty exists in obtaining uniformity 

 in this direction. Standard gold should contain twenty-two 

 parts of fine gold and two parts of alloy. The mixture is made 

 at the Mint with scrupulous care ; but, in spite of this, the 

 assayer on testing the resulting planchets will find diversity 

 of quality. The law allows and legalizes this diversity, to 

 a very limited extent it is true, but it does allow it. Sovereigns 

 and half sovereigns issued from the Tower Hill establishment 

 are sought after and used by the jewellers of all nations in the 

 manufacture of trinkets, for they are aware that there is more 

 certainty of those pieces of money being very near to standard 

 than there is of the gold coins of any other country. Hence 

 they know precisely how much alloy to add to molten coins, in 

 order to reduce the mass to the low standard of jeweller's 

 gold. Thus, in both a mechanical and chemical sense, it may 

 be fairly asserted that the Royal Mint is in advance of all other 

 mints. 



It is to its mechanical excellence that we desire more espe- 

 cially to attract the attention of our readers ; and, as we 

 commenced by observing, this is nowhere more convincingly 

 illustrated than in the fitments of the weighing-room. The 

 weighing balances reject all planchets which are "out of 

 remedy/' that is, all which are above or below the lines of 

 variation drawn by legal enactment, and they accept for coinage 

 all that are wifchin those lines. Before advancing to the de- 

 scription of their mode of action in achieving this desideratum, 

 we shall introduce in a tabulated form the standard weight, 

 the legal maximum weight, the legal minimum weight, tho 

 " remedy," and the dimensions of every denomination of coin 

 circulating in Great Britain and the principal colonies. Such 

 a table, which is given in the following page, will, it is hoped, 

 be of practical value, as it will certainly conduce to a clearer 

 conception of the ingeniously constructed automaton balances, 

 and of the nature of their almost judicial offices : — 



