Today, let's see what's written on coins. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
Coin collectors call their
work numismatics, or the science of coins. That may
sound pretentious, but think for a minute about
what coins are. They're the most durable written
record -- a record that reflects the myths and
legends of people. They tell you what we honor and
what we find beautiful. American coins show us
buffalo and Indians, wheat, Miss Liberty, bald
eagles, and former presidents. They affirm our
trust in God -- variable though that conviction may
be.
Coinage is an odd technology. Coins are two things
at once -- an historical record and a claim to
goods and services. Since the metal they're made of
has value, that claim survives long after they're
issued. Bronze coins minted by the first-century
Roman Emperor Domitian were still being used in
Spain as late as the 17th century. Philip IV
finally called them in to restamp them.
I have in my hand a late 2nd-century-BC Roman
denarius. Jupiter's picture is on the front; a
Roman war chariot, called a quadriga, is on the
back. The rim is chipped all the way around. That's
from the old way of making coins. A silver blank
was stamped. Then fragments were nipped out of the
unstamped rim until the coin had the right weight.
That finicky little silver-saving process gave us
the expression "penny-pinching." It also showed
that the coin was solid -- not just silver-plated.
A century later, the new gods -- the Imperial
Caesars -- had replaced the old household dieties
on the front of the denarius. The republic was now
an empire. The old war chariot survived for a
while. Rome kept its interest in war.
Here's a handful of contemporary Cayman Island
coins. What do Caymanians think about? For one
thing, they voluntarily claim membership in the
British Commonwealth. So we see Queen Elizabeth on
all their coins. But on the other side are boats,
birds, shrimp, and the Caymanian national symbol --
the turtle. Anyone looking at these coins a
thousand years from now will be able to see the
islands and their natural beauty through Caymanian
eyes.
Money, after all, represents the works of our hands
-- our technology. Our interest in money has a
component that's far more honorable than greed.
Money represents what we do. And what we do is what
we are. A curious biblical remark tells us that our
heart will be where our treasure is. It sounds
cynical at first, but it makes more sense when we
see money as a kind of condensed representation of
ourselves. In the end, it's not suprising that we
reveal our hearts in this most peculiar art form.
We say who we are, and what we value, when we coin
money.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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