Automatic Weighing at the Royal Mint. 81 



establishment the new and silent, but most efficient coiners' 

 assistants should occupy on their arrival at Tower Hill. 

 Above all things it was important that they should be undis- 

 turbed in their vocation by the tremor or vibration of the 

 powerful steam engines and ponderous machinery engaged in 

 the reduction of bar gold into planchets, or by the heavy and 

 continuous beatings of the coining-presses, which finally con- 

 verted those planchets into coin. A large room, on the base- 

 ment story of the Coining Department buildings, and which 

 had been used as a kind of gigantic " what-not/' or magazine 

 for the reception of odds and ends of every kind, by the 

 Moneyers, appeared to offer peculiar attractions, and finally the 

 marine stores within it — the accumulations of half-a- century 

 nearly — were displaced and disposed of in order to make way 

 for the incoming tenants. The room was lofty, large, and light ; 

 and, singularly enough, it was situated immediately beneath 

 the old sizing-room, the operations of which the automatons 

 were intended to supersede. A short time sufficed to effect a 

 marvellous transformation in the internal aspect of the future 

 weighing-room. Its dingy and dirty walls and ceilings, covered 

 by spiders' webs and honeycombed by age, were cleansed 

 and renovated. A longitudinal trench of considerable 

 depth was dug in it, and this afterwards filled in with 

 concrete and stone, served as a foundation for the weighing 

 balances. So far as isolation of position was concerned, this 

 arrangement was perfect, and a line of low cast-iron tables — 

 rather too low, perhaps, for the convenience of the attendants — 

 was speedily implanted on the solid foundation. These tables, 

 planed on their upper surfaces, which were made to a " dead 

 level," were not long unoccupied. The automatons, in plate- 

 glass and brass frames, soon glistened upon the tables, and, 

 at a first glance, reminded one forcibly of as many skeleton 

 drawing-room clocks arranged for inspection or sale. In order 

 to communicate motion to them, a line of small bright wrought- 

 iron shafting, supported by neat pendants of cast-iron attached 

 to the ceiling, and upon which were hung brass three- 

 motion pulleys, was made to span the length of the room. The 

 shafting was immediately and high above the line of machines, 

 and fine gut bands, passing over its pulleys, descended to 

 corresponding pulleys on the main driving spindles of the 

 automatons. The lower series of pulleys were immediately 

 outside the machine cases through holes in which the spindles 

 ran, and a small brass weight, lever, and friction wheels were so 

 attached as to tighten the bands sufficiently to give constant 

 motion to the coin-feeding slides, etc., of the tiny con- 

 trivances within. A series of thumb-screws were added, for 

 the application of pressure great enough to stop the action of 



