Tag: coin

The Origin of the Piggy Bank

Leave a comment

During the 15th century, the English would often store coins within pygg pots or containers. During the 18th century these vessels became referred to as “piggy banks” which is where the modern day term is derived from. Piggy banks were called as such because of the pygg they were comprised of which is a type of clay, an inexpensive, orange colored earthenware clay used to produce everyday vessels within England from the 15th century onward (e.g. pitchers, cups, pots etc.). The primary reason for this is that metal has been costly all throughout history, due to the difficulty of sourcing and producing it from ore, and because of this expense, alongside the fact that pygg is more commonly available and found in larger quantities throughout England, the English public relied upon pygg containers to hold not only food and liquids but also spare coins and other small treasures

The Status Symbol of Keys Within the Ancient Roman Empire

2 Comments

Metal keys first appeared during the Ancient Roman Empire and were viewed and often flaunted during the period as an indicator of wealth and/or elevated social status, as Ancient Roman keys were typically comprised of bronze or iron, occasionally worn as decorative jewelry (e.g. rings, bracelets, belt attachments etc.), and used primarily to secure high value items (e.g. jewelry boxes, document cases, coin chests etc.) making them both functional tools but also visible reminders of social status and income. Because only the wealthy could afford metal keys within the Ancient Roman Empire, lower socioeconomic classes relied upon more simplistic, wooden lock mechanisms and in many cases left valuable possessions unsecured entirely. Some Ancient Roman keys featured intricate designs (e.g. animal motifs and geometric patterns etc.), personalized and designed to reflect the predilections of the owner of the key and the lock it is designed for. The Latin term for key, which is “clavis”, evolved and came to mean “code” or “solution” over time, which is notable because it demonstrates the period when physical access and security and intellectual access and security became conceptually correlated with one another. Archaeologists and historians have recovered metal keys from Ancient Roman villas, balneae (pronounced “bahl-neh-eye”) which are bathhouses, and burial sites, often discovered alongside personal items (e.g. grooming tools, coins, small religious tokens etc.). The modern day concept of personal security and having exclusive access to one’s belongings and/or information traces its origins back to these early locking mechanisms and keys as what began as a practical intervention for safeguarding valuables laid the foundation for the modern day systems of privacy, ownership, and controlled access to sensitive and/or valuable information or objects

City States Minting Currency and the System That Replaced This

Leave a comment

Throughout history, city states were permitted the legal status to design and manufacture their own unique currency which inevitably led to tens of thousands of different designs on both the fronts and backs of coins, throughout the ancient world. Surprisingly this chaotic monetary system was not an issue for commerce as each coin manufactured was approximately the same size and weight with the same amount of silver or gold smelted into it, making trade relatively straightforward as values rarely fluctuated and could be traded at their intended face value regardless of the geographic location they were manufactured in. This system eventually gave way to the modern day system developed during the 18th century in the United States of America which stated that only the government of a nation was legally permitted to mint currency, with the size and metals being utilized deemed irrelevant as the currency depended solely upon how valuable the currency was in comparison to the world market, a counter balance which is heavily influenced by the gross domestic product of both the import and export of every country involved in trade alongside many other smaller yet equally important intrinsic factors (e.g. political climate or instability)

The British Penny

1 Comment

Neither the United States of America nor Canada have ever manufactured a penny. The term “penny” is a British invention derived from the term “pence” and refers to a “coin used before 1971 which is worth one twelfth of a shilling”. When the United States seceded from Britain, they created the term “cent”, which refers to a “unit of currency which is 1% of $1.00

The Advent of Coins With Ridges

Leave a comment

In the early age of coin currency, after coins were struck, opportunistic people would excise small pieces from the edge of the coin. After doing so over and over, these people would eventually amalgamate large quantities of silver. It was such a large problem that the British government became involved in an attempt to put an end to it. Sir Isaac Newton is credited with inventing the the ridged coin as a solution, which is why to this day coins have ridges. The British government made it law that if any of the ridges were missing from any coin, the coin was no longer constituted as legal tendered currency. This solution stopped the practice of coin excision all together