SEPTEMBER 29
2020•Connecticut Gerber Scale Innovation Dollar Released
2022•American Eagle Palladium Reverse Proof
Connecticut’s Gerber Variable Scale Innovation Dollars Go on Sale
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At noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 29, 2020, the United States Mint opened sales of rolls and bags containing Connecticut’s American Innovation $1 coin, honoring Heinz Joseph Gerber and his ingenious Gerber Variable Scale.
The coin celebrated a deceptively simple mechanical tool that transformed the way engineers, architects, and scientists measured and manipulated graphical information before electronic calculators and computers became commonplace. Its reverse shows the variable scale enlarging a geometric form resembling Connecticut by 200 percent—an unusually literal demonstration of an invention’s function on an American coin.
The September release also carried a compelling human story. Gerber had escaped Nazi-controlled Austria as a teenager, settled in Connecticut, studied aeronautical engineering, and developed an invention whose earliest inspiration involved an elastic band from a pair of pajamas.
The American Innovation $1 Coin Program
Congress authorized the American Innovation $1 Coin Program in 2018.
The multi-year series was designed to honor significant American innovations and innovators from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five U.S. territories.
A special introductory coin appeared in 2018, followed by four state coins per year beginning in 2019.
The states appear generally in the order in which they ratified the Constitution or entered the Union. After the states, the District of Columbia and territories complete the program.
Connecticut was the first state represented in the program’s 2020 group.
The other three 2020 coins honored the telephone for Massachusetts, the Hubble Space Telescope for Maryland, and educator and civil-rights leader Septima Poinsette Clark for South Carolina.
Connecticut’s subject was far less familiar to most Americans than the telephone or Hubble telescope.
That was part of the program’s value: circulating-sized coins could introduce important innovations that had profoundly influenced American life without necessarily becoming household names.
Who Was Heinz Joseph Gerber?
Heinz Joseph Gerber—often known as Joseph Gerber—was born in Austria in 1924.
His childhood was shattered by the rise of Nazi rule.
As a teenager, Gerber was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp. He and his mother eventually escaped Nazi-controlled Austria and immigrated to the United States.
They settled in Connecticut.
Gerber later attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he studied aeronautical engineering.
Engineering depends heavily on scale.
A drawing may represent an aircraft, building, machine, or landscape many times larger or smaller than the paper on which it appears.
Engineers therefore need reliable ways to convert dimensions and extract measurements from drawings, curves, graphs, and other graphical representations.
Before digital tools made such operations nearly instantaneous, these tasks demanded mechanical ingenuity.
Gerber saw an opportunity to make them faster.
The story of the Gerber Variable Scale has an almost improbable beginning.
While studying engineering in 1945, Gerber experimented with an elastic band removed from a pair of pajamas.
Stretching a uniformly marked elastic material suggested a way to change scale directly.
From that insight came a flexible measuring instrument capable of expanding, contracting, following curves, and turning corners.
The idea developed into the Gerber Variable Scale.
How the Variable Scale Worked
The device allowed users to obtain direct numerical readings from graphical information.
Rather than repeatedly performing separate mathematical conversions, an engineer could adjust the flexible scale to a desired relationship and measure directly from a drawing or graph.
Its ability to conform to curves made it especially useful for work that ordinary rigid rulers could not handle conveniently.
The tool could expand or contract proportionally while retaining useful divisions.
In an era before electronic computation became universal, that could save enormous amounts of time.
The invention proved highly successful.
By the 1950s, the Gerber Variable Scale had become widely used by engineers and architects.
The United States Mint has described it as one of the most revolutionary engineering tools since the slide rule.
Eventually calculators, computer-aided design, and digital computation displaced many of the mechanical techniques for which it was created.
But the scale had already contributed to the engineering and scientific work of the twentieth century.
The variable scale became the foundation of a much larger career in invention.
Gerber founded a Connecticut technology company and developed systems that automated difficult industrial processes.
His work reached fields including drafting, manufacturing, electronics, apparel production, and computer-assisted design.
The Connecticut dollar therefore commemorates more than a clever measuring device. It represents the beginning of a lifetime devoted to turning mathematical and engineering problems into practical tools.
Designing a coin about a mechanical scale presented an unusual artistic challenge.
A portrait of an inventor would have been straightforward, but it would not necessarily explain the innovation.
Designer Richard Masters took a different approach.
The reverse shows the Gerber Variable Scale actually performing its function.
A geometric shape resembling Connecticut is enlarged by 200 percent.
The viewer therefore sees not only what the device looked like, but what it did.
The Reverse Design
The reverse inscriptions are UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, GERBER VARIABLE SCALE, and CONNECTICUT.
Richard Masters of the United States Mint Artistic Infusion Program designed the reverse.
Mint Medallic Artist Renata Gordon sculpted it.
The composition is unusually technical for American coinage. Lines, measuring elements, and geometric forms take the place of the portraits, monuments, animals, and heraldic imagery more commonly found on U.S. coins.
That makes the design particularly well suited to the Innovation series.
Many commemorative designs require background knowledge before their symbolism becomes clear. Connecticut’s Innovation dollar takes the opposite approach. The reverse behaves almost like a miniature technical illustration: the scale, the original form, the enlarged form, and the “200%” relationship allow a viewer to infer that the device changes dimensions proportionally.
That makes the coin unusual within modern U.S. numismatics. Its subject is not merely represented; its operating principle is demonstrated. The design turns the limited surface of a dollar coin into a compact lesson in engineering.
All coins in the American Innovation series share a common obverse.
Designed by Justin Kunz and sculpted by Phebe Hemphill, it presents the Statue of Liberty in profile.
The inscriptions IN GOD WE TRUST and $1 appear on the obverse.
A stylized gear privy mark reinforces the program’s theme of industry and innovation.
The gear treatment has changed during the series, providing another small detail for collectors to follow.
The Edge Carries Important Information
Like the Presidential and Native American dollars, American Innovation dollars place several inscriptions on the edge.
The Connecticut coin carries the year 2020, the mint mark, and E PLURIBUS UNUM as incused edge lettering.
Moving those elements away from the obverse and reverse gives the artists additional space for the main designs.
It also means collectors must examine a third surface of the coin to see all of its identifying information.
The Connecticut Innovation dollar has the familiar golden appearance of modern U.S. dollar coins.
Its manganese-brass composition is 88.5 percent copper, 6 percent zinc, 3.5 percent manganese, and 2 percent nickel.
It weighs 8.1 grams and measures 26.49 millimeters in diameter.
The edge is lettered.
The September 29 rolls and bags contained uncirculated coins from Philadelphia and Denver.
The Mint announced that sales would begin at noon EDT on September 29.
Collectors could order 25-coin rolls from either Philadelphia or Denver for $34.50 each.
One-hundred-coin bags from either facility were priced at $117.50.
The Philadelphia roll carried product code 20GRA and the Denver roll 20GRE. Philadelphia and Denver bags were offered as 20GBA and 20GBE.
There were no stated mintage, product, or household-order limits for the rolls and bags.
The American Innovation dollars were created as legal-tender coins, but their principal public distribution has differed from the kind of widespread pocket-change circulation associated with State Quarters. Mint rolls and bags therefore became an important way for collectors to obtain Philadelphia and Denver examples in quantity and in uncirculated condition.
For the Connecticut issue, the September 29 offering also separated the P- and D-mint coins from the San Francisco reverse proof sold earlier. A collector following the complete issue had to pay attention not only to the design but to mint, finish, edge lettering, and product format.
A Release During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The coin reached collectors during an extraordinary year.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted commerce, manufacturing, public events, and normal Mint operations.
Mint sales centers were closed for periods of the pandemic, and many numismatic products depended more heavily than ever on online ordering and shipping.
Against that backdrop, the American Innovation program continued releasing new designs documenting the nation’s history of problem solving.
A coin honoring an engineering tool was especially appropriate in a year when technology played such a visible role in adapting to disruption.
September 29 was not the first time collectors could purchase a 2020 Connecticut Innovation dollar in any form.
The Mint had begun accepting orders for a San Francisco reverse-proof version on July 21.
That collector coin had a 50,000-piece mintage limit.
The September 29 event specifically concerned the Philadelphia and Denver uncirculated coins packaged in rolls and bags.
Distinguishing those product releases is important when assigning an exact historical date.
The Connecticut design also appeared in the 2020 American Innovation $1 Coin Proof Set.
That set went on sale October 8 and included proof versions of all four 2020 state designs.
Thus collectors could encounter the Gerber Variable Scale design in several different finishes and product formats during the year.
The September 29 rolls-and-bags release, however, was the principal offering of Philadelphia and Denver uncirculated pieces.
Why Put an Obscure Tool on a Coin?
The Connecticut dollar illustrates what distinguishes the American Innovation series from many other U.S. coin programs.
It is not restricted to universally recognizable inventions.
Instead, it can recover stories that are enormously important within technical fields but largely unknown outside them.
Millions of people recognize the telephone. Far fewer have heard of the Gerber Variable Scale.
A national coin provides a reason to ask what the object is—and why it mattered.
Gerber’s biography adds another dimension to the coin.
The innovation honored as part of Connecticut’s contribution to American ingenuity came from a young man who had fled persecution in Europe.
He arrived in the United States, pursued engineering education, and transformed a simple observation about elastic material into a useful industrial instrument.
His story connects immigration, education, invention, entrepreneurship, and twentieth-century technology.
All of that history sits behind a one-dollar coin dominated by a measuring scale and a geometric outline.
September 29, 2020 marks the release of Philadelphia and Denver rolls and bags of Connecticut’s American Innovation dollar.
The coin honored Heinz Joseph Gerber’s Variable Scale, a flexible engineering instrument invented while he was studying aeronautical engineering in 1945.
Richard Masters and Renata Gordon transformed the invention into an unusually explanatory coin design, showing the scale enlarging a Connecticut-shaped figure by 200 percent.
The result captures the central idea of the American Innovation program particularly well.
Innovation is not always a famous machine or a dramatic scientific breakthrough. Sometimes it is a clever tool that makes difficult work faster, easier, and more precise—and then quietly helps shape decades of technological progress.
On September 29, 2020, that kind of ingenuity became the subject of an American dollar.
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2022 — American Eagle Palladium Reverse Proof — The 2022 American Eagle one-ounce palladium reverse proof coin went on sale.