US Mint Established: Standardized Currency Born

The Coinage Act of 1792 created far more than a building where coins were stamped. Signed into law on April 2, 1792, it established a decimal currency system for the new republic, defined the precise metal content of every denomination, and made counterfeiting a capital offense punishable by death. The United States Mint became the first federal building constructed under the authority of the Constitution, beating even the White House and the Capitol. The young nation desperately needed standardized money. Americans in 1792 conducted business using a bewildering mix of Spanish dollars, British pounds, French livres, Dutch guilders, and privately minted coins of unreliable weight and purity. Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, had proposed a decimal system based on the Spanish milled dollar, which was already the most widely circulated coin in the country. Thomas Jefferson refined the plan, and Congress adopted it with remarkably little debate. The Act established the dollar as the basic unit and created denominations from the half-cent to the ten-dollar gold eagle. Each coin's metallic content was specified by law: the silver dollar contained 371.25 grains of pure silver, the gold eagle contained 247.5 grains of pure gold. The fixed ratio of silver to gold was set at 15 to 1, a number that would cause decades of monetary controversy as the market price of the metals fluctuated. David Rittenhouse, the first Director of the Mint, oversaw construction of the facility on Seventh Street in Philadelphia. The first coins struck were silver half dimes in 1792, reportedly using silverware donated by George Washington, though this story may be apocryphal. Copper cents and half-cents followed. The early Mint operated with hand-powered screw presses and horse-drawn rolling mills, producing coins one at a time. The Coinage Act's most lasting innovation was the decimal system itself, which spread globally and remains the basis of most national currencies today.