Jacob Perkins Printing and Engraving Building: Principle Rafter Set

R. G. Doty , Senior Curator of Numismatics at the Smithsonian

The key player was a genius from Newburyport, Massachusetts, named Jacob Perkins. Perkins was a sometime inventor and dedicated self-promoter, very skilled in working with metals. Shortly before 1800, he began tinkering with the concept of printing currency from steel plates rather than copper ones. Steel would outwear copper by a factor of six, but it was proportionally harder to engrave.
Perkins made two contributions to the engraving and printing conundrum. He devised a method for softening and hardening steel at will: a design could be engraved in soft steel, hardened, and then used to print anything, including money. But just like the unsung Boston genius of 1690, Perkins carried things a logical and absolutely crucial step farther. He devised a transfer press, wherein designs could be replicated an infinite number of times.
He began with a design engraved on a soft piece of steel. Harden that piece, clamp it in a press, and force a soft steel cylinder over the flat plate often enough and you’d eventually pick up the original design, in relief. Harden the cylinder and force it repeatedly over a flat piece of soft steel and you’d have your original design back again. Add various touches, harden the plate, and you’d have a steel printing plate, ready for work. And you could make an infinite number of plates in this fashion, each identical to all the others.
Jacob Perkins had invented a technology so elegant, and so perfect, that security printers would rely on it for the better part of two centuries
The paper era started out in Massachusetts, where colonial authorities hit upon the idea of issuing paper certificates to purchase the supplies and pay the troops the Bay Colony was expected to contribute to the first of an interminable series of English wars against the French in Canada. This was in 1690: the notes were printed from engraved copper plates (probably the work of silversmith Jeremiah Dummer), the troops were paid, the supplies, purchased. The Crown pledged to pay Massachusetts for its trouble, in specie, at war’s end.
The inventor had perfected things a year or two prior to 1805. He then built a large printery in Newburyport and waited for orders to flood in. A substantial trickle repaid his efforts, but matters did not quite go as he assumed they would. Figure 1 shows a typical Perkins product, an 1814 five-dollar bill for the Gloucester Bank. Note the complexity of design. All of the work for the face and for the back (unlike many other printers, Perkins favored biface notes) could effectively be done by means of large plates with holes allowing for "customization" (the denomination, the name of the bank, and the place of issue). These notes were extremely difficult to counterfeit—so much so that the state of Massachusetts mandated that every bank in the state (which then included Maine) apply to Jacob Perkins for their paper money. But if his products were difficult to forge, they were even more difficult to love; they look downright homely now, and they must have given a similar impression two centuries ago.
So bankers were of mixed minds. While they appreciated what the inventor had accomplished, they were looking for variety. And a growing group of printers was soon meeting the challenge. In essence, Murray, Draper, Fairman, and Company (the Philadelphia firm where Perkins worked for a few years after winding up his own printshop) and all who followed would give the bankers what they wanted—individualized money—while using Perkins’s methods to achieve it.

Jacob Perkins
Born: 9 Jul 1766, Newburyport MA
Marriage: Hannah Greenleaf on 11 Nov 1790
Died: 11 Jul 1849, London England
General notes:
Silversmith
Events in his life were:
• Apprenticed about 1779 to Elias Davis in Newburyport MA 1
• He worked from 1783 to 1816 as a silversmith in Newburyport MA inherited his master's business at age 17. 2
• Began his carrer in Newburyport, working there until c. 1816 when he moved to Philadelphia. He has been called an inventive genius and was honored in London by the Society of Liberal Arts. Invented machine to manufacture wire into nails; supervised restoring of old guns for government in 1812; invented steam gun to fire 100 balls a minute. Perkins's skill as a goldsmith enabled him to succeed in developing the dies for minting the Massachusetts copper cent of 1788. On one side is the American eagle, with a shield on its breast, and on the other an Indian with bow and arrow pointed downward. The silver marks of silversmith Theophilus Bradbury and Son are a near mirror image of the Massachusetts cent. Their mark was most likely influenced by the invention by Perkins in 1813 of a device for manufacturing silver spoons by shaping them between a steel roller and a movable table, each of these parts having respectively the impression of the two sides of the spoon. Spoons of this period bearing the aforesaid markings were probably all made by means of the Perkins Roller Press. In 1815 Perkins stated that he had examined specimens of Bradbury and Son's work and pronounced them equal to European manufacture. Without doubt Perkins, with his knowledge of die-making, simplified much of the repetitive work performed by this firm. In a published address in 1818 by the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association, his name is given in the classified trades list as a goldsmith. 2
• About 1790 Perkins built a machine to cut and head nails in one operation, but the plant he opened to exploit it was ruined by an extended lawsuit over the invention. He subsequently devised a method of bank-note engraving that made counterfeiting extremely difficult. Failing to attract American interest in the process, Perkins and his partner set up a factory in England and in 1819 began printing notes for local banks; after 1840 the factory was also authorized to print Britain's first penny postage stamps.Perkins also experimented with high-pressure steam boilers and in 1823 devised means to attain working steam pressure of 800-1400 psi. He built a Woolf-type steam engine (1827), designed an improved paddle wheel (1829), and invented a means for the free circulation of water in boilers (1831), which led to the design of modern water-tube boilers. He was awarded a medal by the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts for his method of ventilating ships' holds.

Jacob Perkins Printing and Engraving Building

Jacob Perkins

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Principle Rafter Set

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R. G. Doty , Senior Curator of Numismatics at the Smithsonian

Massachusetts 1788 Copper Cent

1814 Five Dollar Bill

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