OCTOBER 16
1792•First U.S. Mint / Copper Supply
2007•Michael E. DeBakey Gold Medal Act
Copper and Lead Arrive for America’s First Mint
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On October 16, 1792, United States Mint Director David Rittenhouse recorded Warrant No. 17, paying James and Shoemaker $368.97 for 1,451 pounds of copper and 140 pounds of lead. It was an ordinary-looking purchase with extraordinary historical context: the federal Mint was still being built, equipped, staffed, and supplied for the first regular coinage of the United States.
No famous circulating coin was released that day. No new design was unveiled. Instead, the record captures something rarer in the historical record—the physical creation of the American coinage system itself.
Before cents could pour from the presses in 1793, the Mint needed metal, furnaces, presses, ironwork, bricks, charcoal, tools, workmen, and buildings capable of transforming raw material into money. The October 16 purchase was one piece of that industrial puzzle.
The Mint Was Only Months Old
Congress established the United States Mint through the Coinage Act of April 2, 1792.
The law created a national decimal coinage system built around the dollar and authorized denominations from the copper half cent through the gold eagle.
But passing a law did not instantly create a working mint.
Officials still had to acquire property, construct and modify buildings, obtain machinery, hire skilled workers, locate dependable supplies of metal, prepare dies, and establish procedures for handling valuable bullion.
October 1792 found that work still underway.
President George Washington selected David Rittenhouse as the first Director of the Mint.
Rittenhouse was one of the most respected American scientists of his generation—an astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, surveyor, and public official.
His new assignment was highly practical.
He had to turn Congress’s monetary legislation into an operating industrial institution.
The surviving warrants show him buying the materials and services necessary to make that happen.
Philadelphia Becomes the Home of Federal Coinage
The Coinage Act required the Mint to operate at the seat of the federal government, which was then Philadelphia.
Rittenhouse acquired property on Seventh Street near Arch Street.
The site included existing structures that could be adapted, while additional construction created specialized Mint facilities.
The first Philadelphia Mint would remain the center of federal coin production for four decades.
It was also the first federal building erected under authority of the United States government.
On July 9, 1792, President Washington formally approved Rittenhouse’s purchase of the Mint property, the employment of Henry Voigt as coiner, and plans to procure fifteen tons of copper.
Washington also authorized necessary alterations and additions to the buildings.
The document demonstrates how closely the executive branch followed the Mint’s creation.
A national coinage was not a minor administrative detail. It was part of establishing the practical sovereignty of the new federal government.
Rittenhouse’s account of warrants provides an unusually concrete view of the Mint’s birth.
Warrant No. 1 covered $4,266.67 for the lot and buildings.
Other warrants paid for cutting equipment, presses, castings, pump work, labor, wrought iron, timber, stonework, bricks, lime, ropes, charcoal, and additional copper.
The ledger reads less like a glamorous history of rare coins and more like the account book of a factory being assembled from scratch.
That is precisely why it is so valuable.
The entry for October 16 is concise:
Warrant No. 17. James and Shoemaker, 1451 lbs. of copper and 140 lb. of lead $368.97.
The wording preserved in the early Mint chronology is based on the account of warrants drawn by David Rittenhouse.
The purchase was substantial. More than three-quarters of a ton of metal arrived in one transaction.
At a Mint preparing to manufacture copper coins on a national scale, securing bulk metal was essential.
Why Copper Mattered
The Coinage Act authorized two base-metal denominations: the cent and half cent.
These were intended to provide small change for everyday commerce.
The cent was initially specified at 11 pennyweights of copper and the half cent at half that weight.
Congress later reduced the statutory weights before regular production began.
Either way, large quantities of copper were required if the Mint hoped to supply meaningful numbers of small coins.
The early United States inherited a confusing monetary environment.
Foreign coins circulated alongside state issues, private tokens, worn coppers, and other forms of money.
Reliable low-denomination coinage was especially important for ordinary purchases.
A national copper cent and half cent promised standardized value under federal authority.
But that promise depended on something as basic as obtaining enough usable copper at an acceptable price.
The October 16 transaction was not the Mint’s first purchase of copper.
An early account cited by numismatic historian Sylvester Sage Crosby records six pounds of old copper purchased in September 1792 at one shilling three pence per pound.
That tiny quantity was experimental compared with the 1,451-pound October purchase.
The difference illustrates the transition from preparing and testing equipment toward acquiring material in quantities suitable for actual production.
The same warrant included 140 pounds of lead.
Lead was a useful industrial material in an eighteenth-century mint and appears repeatedly in surviving Mint supply records.
Later warrants document additional purchases, including 500 pounds of bar lead in December 1792.
Modern metallurgical research into early Mint records has also examined these lead purchases when reconstructing production practices and alloy-related operations.
The important point is that Warrant No. 17 was a mixed industrial-material purchase, not simply an order for coin blanks ready to strike.
The Mint Was Building an Entire Manufacturing System
A coin begins as metal, but a mint requires far more than metal.
Raw copper had to be melted and refined or alloyed as necessary.
It then had to be cast into workable forms, rolled to thickness, cut into planchets, adjusted, prepared, and finally struck between engraved dies.
Furnaces needed fuel. Machinery needed iron and brass components. Buildings needed fire-resistant materials. Workers needed tools and wages.
The warrant ledger documents all of those mundane necessities.
Early accounts place the arrival of the Mint’s coining presses on September 21, 1792.
The presses were imported from England.
By early October they were being put into operation.
Thus the October 16 copper-and-lead purchase came less than a month after crucial striking machinery reached the new Mint.
The timing shows an institution rapidly moving from construction toward experimentation and eventual production.
Henry Voigt served as the Mint’s first chief coiner.
He was deeply involved in preparing machinery, supervising workers, and developing the earliest federal coinage.
Rittenhouse’s warrants repeatedly record payments to Voigt for workmen and Mint expenses.
Voigt would also play an important role in the first federal cents, including the controversial 1793 Chain cent.
In late 1792, however, the Mint was still assembling the shop in which those coins would be made.
Washington told Congress in November 1792 that there had been “a small beginning” in half dimes.
The famous 1792 half dismes were produced during this formative period.
Their precise status has long generated numismatic discussion because they preceded the Mint’s fully established regular production.
Regardless of classification, they demonstrate that experimental and limited coinage activity was already occurring while the facility was still being completed.
The copper denominations awaited their own experiments.
December Brings Experimental Cents
Henry Voigt recorded on December 17, 1792 that he had “struck off a few pieces of copper coins.”
The next day, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson sent President Washington two cents made according to Voigt’s plan using silver plugs inserted into copper.
These experimental pieces were attempts to solve a difficult problem: how to give a cent its legally required intrinsic value without making it inconveniently large.
The October copper supply helped create the material environment in which such experiments could occur.
One experimental concept used a small silver plug worth three-quarters of a cent inserted into a copper body worth roughly one-quarter cent.
The result was intended to contain one cent of intrinsic metallic value while remaining physically manageable.
Today, surviving 1792 Silver Center cents rank among the most famous experimental coins in American numismatics.
They reveal just how seriously early officials wrestled with the relationship between face value, metal value, size, and public trust.
Jefferson’s December correspondence also described additional ideas.
Rittenhouse intended to experiment with mixing the silver and copper by fusion and with a copper-only cent of the same smaller size.
Another possibility was the full-size copper cent required under the existing law.
These experiments show that the Mint was not merely copying an established manufacturing formula.
Its officers were solving monetary and engineering problems in real time.
Securing enough copper remained difficult.
On November 29, 1792, Washington noted that the price of copper had risen and that obtaining the authorized quantity domestically appeared unlikely.
He therefore supported purchasing copper from Europe on the public account.
The request contemplated $10,000—an enormous increase over the $368.97 October 16 warrant.
The Mint’s copper needs were quickly moving from local purchases toward an international supply problem.
The warrant chronology records a November 26 purchase from Gustavus and Hugh Colhoun involving 4,140 pounds of copper at approximately 25 cents per pound, with a recorded payment of $1,057.24.
That transaction dwarfed the October 16 purchase.
Together, the entries show the Mint accumulating copper in stages as it prepared for cent and half-cent production.
Raw material acquisition was becoming a major operating expense.
Regular Federal Coinage Begins in 1793
The Mint’s first regular federal coins for circulation were copper cents and half cents dated 1793.
The Chain cent entered production in March.
Its reverse showed an interlocking chain representing the states, while the obverse featured Liberty with flowing hair.
The design was quickly replaced, but the coin marked a decisive transition: the United States Mint was no longer merely a building project. It was producing national money.
It is tempting to study early coins only after they emerged from the press.
But every 1793 cent depended on the less glamorous work performed in 1792.
Someone had to find the metal.
Someone had to authorize payment.
Someone had to transport it to Philadelphia, prepare the furnaces, install the machinery, cut the dies, and organize the labor.
Warrant No. 17 preserves one of those steps with unusual precision.
In the Mint account, $368.97 was a business expense.
Historically, it represents federal investment in a new national institution.
The government was converting congressional authority into physical capacity.
Money itself required money to create: appropriations for property, machinery, materials, wages, construction, and imported supplies.
The early warrant books make that reality visible in individual transactions.
Most famous dates in numismatic history concern a coin’s first strike, release, legislation, discovery, or auction.
October 16, 1792 is different.
It is a behind-the-scenes date.
The importance lies not in a finished coin but in the supply chain that made future coins possible.
For historians, these administrative records can be as revealing as the coins themselves because they show exactly how an institution operated.
Why Early Mint Records Matter
Documentation from the first Mint is incomplete.
Records were lost, scattered, or preserved unevenly.
Researchers have reconstructed the Mint’s daily history from surviving warrants, correspondence, account books, congressional documents, and later historical works.
The PCGS early Mint chronology explicitly notes the importance of National Archives holdings in rebuilding this record.
That makes a precisely dated entry such as Warrant No. 17 especially useful.
The October purchase occurred before the first regular federal cent, before the first federal silver dollar, before the first gold eagle, and before the Mint had demonstrated that it could reliably supply the country with its own coinage.
Nothing about success was automatic.
The new institution faced shortages of skilled labor, suitable machinery, precious metals, copper, and working capital.
Its officers were inventing procedures while operating under detailed statutory requirements.
Every shipment of material pushed the Mint one step closer to functioning as intended.
October 16, 1792 captures the United States Mint before its famous coins existed.
Warrant No. 17 records $368.97 paid to James and Shoemaker for 1,451 pounds of copper and 140 pounds of lead.
By itself, the entry looks like bookkeeping.
Placed in context, it becomes a snapshot of the federal coinage system under construction.
Only months earlier, Congress had created the Mint. The Philadelphia buildings were being fitted for industrial work. Presses had arrived only weeks before. Rittenhouse and Voigt were buying metal, paying workmen, installing machinery, and preparing experiments that would lead to America’s first regular cents in 1793.
The coins collectors treasure today began not with rarity or auction prices, but with raw materials and receipts.
On October 16, 1792, more than 1,500 pounds of copper and lead entered that story—and helped supply the workshop that was about to begin making the money of the United States.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
2007 — Michael E. DeBakey Gold Medal Act — The Congressional Gold Medal legislation honoring Dr. Michael E. DeBakey became law.