MONEY-MAKING AT THE MINT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13355, 8 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

MONEY-MAKING AT THE MINT.

A PROFITABLE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT.

This year celebrates the centenary of the building of the Royal Mint on Tower Hill though possibly no one in the- Mint has troubled their heads about the fact. For the Mint is the meet staid of Government Departments, and one of the best managed. It makes a profit of more tlian £200,000 a year. . '( A timely account of the wonders of the Mint is given in World's Work by Mr. George Turnbull. • One of the most interesting rooms in the great building is the coining pressroom, where the metal blanks are actually converted into coins, each machine striking off any coin about 120 in a minute: " Seeing these finished coins so plentifully displayed here, one asks whether a handful would" be missed if they were- seized and pocketed by the operator. The question is asked not by way of suggesting that any operator Would forget his trust, but rather to elucidate the explanation. And the explanation is that such an occurrence is frankly impossible. A known quantity of blanks is given out by the officer in charge to be converted into coin, , and the same quantity precisely must come back. If the weight is short by so much as the weight of a sixpence a search is made and the coin is discovered lying on the floor by one of the machines. Where measurements are ? fined down to the thousandth part of an inch, and weights to the fraction of a grain, no deception is possible." : . - , :>

.''. After leaving the pressroom the colour of the coins undergoes examination by young men seated in front of perpetual rollers: —

" One man sees one side of the coins, which then are turned over in passing under the roller and the other side comes uppermost to >«e second man. If on,either side a coin is the wrong colour, the operator expert from long practice in seeing the false among the true as it flies along—by a turn of his hand whips it out.*: : This process of ' overlooking' is undergone in the case of gold,, silver, and bronze."

In the weighing-room are 50 machines under glass-cases, which act the part of detectives. ;•• A shilling is allowed to be .57 of a grain on either side of the proper weight, while a half-sovereign is allowed a margin of .15 of a grainanything outside these limits is summarily rejected:' ■••'■"

It speaks significantly for the precision with which the operations of the Mint are carried out that the number of silver coins rejected does not amount to one per cent, of the whole. The 50 machines in the room can weigh 400,000 coins in a day. There has been practicauy no improvement in the design of the weighing-balance since it was first invented. It remains as it was,, an efficient piece of mechanism, whose authority is never questioned. One of the 50 was exhibited at the 1851 Exhibition, and it is still doing service." I