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Author Topic: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?  (Read 1850 times)

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Offline VOTman

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How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« on: January 21, 2021, 10:29:21 pm »
Roman (and other ancient coins) are often beautifully detailed.  I've wondered how they produced such detailed dies without any magnifying aid?

As a personal exercise, I measured the size of the smallest Roman coin details.  It worked out to ~1 arc-minute of resolution, sometimes a little less.  The smallest detail that an average human eye with perfect vision can resolve is also ~ 1 arc-minute.  So the smallest visible coin details are at the limit of perfect vision.  It doesn't seem reasonable that a coin engraver could engrave details at the extreme limit of his vision.  So how did they work such extreme details into a coin die and do it with great consistency from die-to-die

Your thoughts?

Offline cmcdon0923

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #1 on: January 21, 2021, 11:48:19 pm »
One of my personal opinions is that they did use some type of magnifying aide.  I've never heard of a magnifying glass type artifact being found, but they would almost certainly have been keenly aware of the ability of something like a drop of water being able to magnify. 

Or perhaps something as natural as a clear piece of crystal, which if found in a dig, may not jump out as anything more than just a stone used in a piece of jewelry, as opposed to a magnifying device.
 
And it wasn't just the Romans who were able to include amazing details on their coins.  The Greeks we every bit as skilled.  I have seen silver fractions where the details on some of the figures was unbelievable....to the extent of "anatomical correctness" if you catch my drift.


Craig

Offline shanxi

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2021, 03:41:55 am »
I've never heard of a magnifying glass type artifact being found


From Wikipedia:

The earliest explicit written evidence of a magnifying device is a joke in Aristophanes's The Clouds[2] from 424 BC, where magnifying lenses to ignite tinder were sold in a pharmacy, and Pliny the Elder's "lens",[3] a glass globe filled with water, used to cauterize wounds. (Seneca wrote that it could be used to read letters "no matter how small or dim").[4][5]


[2] Aristophanes, The Clouds, 765–70.
[3] Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 36.67, 37.10.
[4] Seneca, Natural Questions, 1.6.5–7.
[5] The history of the telescope by Henry C. King, Harold Spencer Jones Publisher Courier Dover Publications, 2003 Pg 25 ISBN 0-486-43265-3, ISBN 978-0-486-43265-6

Offline David Atherton

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2021, 07:25:37 am »
The technology was definitely available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrud_lens

Offline VOTman

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2021, 09:11:29 am »
The ideas present here are also mine..., ancient die makers must have used some kind of magnifying aid.

Yes the Romans were aware of the magnifying power of a rain/dew drop on a leaf.

The Romans (and others) had the technology of glass-making.  However, as they weren't able to remove contaminants their manufactured glass isn't colorless.  The Romans did make drinking glasses.  Try this yourself at home.  Find a wine or other glass that is shaped round/circular/spherical and fill it with water.  You've now made a lens out of water.  Put your eye against one side of the water-filled glass and an object on the other side.  You'll see that it is magnified.  No Roman glass lenses survive today but they did have water for lenses!

You could also shape and polish clear or colorless natural crystals into a lens.  And the Romans could also have shaped metal surfaces into a convex or concave shape, then polish them.  This then also becomes a lens and is the basis of today's reflecting telescopes.

Any other ideas of making an ancient magnifying device?

Offline JBF

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2021, 10:31:43 am »
If I recall right, Strabo in his _Geography_, mentions the droplet of water bit.
Of course, probably a lot of engravers did not have "perfect" vision, but were near-sighted.
regular Mr. Magoos.  But, if one was looking for lenses in antiquity, one should look for the
rock crystal kind. 

Offline hayastani

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2021, 11:08:27 am »
Perhaps the following article will interest you:

Dimitris Plantzos. Crystals and Lenses In the Graeco-Roman World. American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997) 451
https://www.academia.edu/256578/Crystals_and_Lenses_In_the_Graeco_Roman_World

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2021, 01:15:45 pm »
Quote
Dimitris Plantzos. Crystals and Lenses In the Graeco-Roman World. American Journal of Archaeology 101 (1997) 451

That's very informative!

Thanks.

Ben

Offline iameatingjam

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #8 on: February 03, 2021, 11:44:25 pm »

Didn't Archimedes use some magnifying device to catch fire to roman ships? or was that just story? either way I think its likely that the greeks and romans had some method of magnification.

Offline Altamura

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #9 on: February 04, 2021, 06:29:17 am »
Quote from: Jesse F on February 03, 2021, 11:44:25 pm
... Didn't Archimedes use some magnifying device to catch fire to roman ships? ...
This had been done by the use of lots of mirrors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#Heat_ray

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Offline PMah

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #10 on: February 04, 2021, 01:54:04 pm »
Although, as they say, "the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence", there is very little evidence of functional devices, rather than jewels or ritual/novelties. These items would not be described as marvels by Pliny or Seneca if they were artisan tools.  The Plantzos article "focuses" on whether the artifacts were intended as any sort of optical aid, not whether they were deployed as tools
     Such lenses would have to be an improvement over myopic human vision.  Consider the engineering of modern loupes and similar close up devices and the difficulties most of us experience handling a traditional magnifying glass and a coin simultaneously.  Now add engraving tools to the mix.  Look at existing Roman glass pieces and consider if they could get optical quality better than a skilled artisan holding something close.  And consider all the really third-rate dies that seem to have been produced if auch devices were standard tools.
   I am not saying "impossible", but my late collecting friend Jay Galst was an opthamologist and he thought myopic engravers were a better fit for the circumstances.  Such artisans could start work in early teens at peak vision and have a 30 year career and still be dead based on life expectancy by the age at which us modern folks start looking for reading glasses.
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Offline frgreg

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #11 on: February 04, 2021, 01:57:26 pm »
While I don't question the possibility of primative magnifying glasses, I do wonder why it took so long to flip it around to use for long distances?  
It would seem to me they could have developed early spy glasses to see distant objects, like enemy military formations.

Offline shanxi

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #12 on: February 04, 2021, 02:23:03 pm »
.... flip it around to use for long distances?  
It would seem to me they could have developed early spy glasses to see distant objects...


You need a two lens system, with different lenses, for a telescope. That's a big step.

Offline Altamura

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2021, 05:10:36 am »
Or in other words: "to flip it around" is by far not enough  ;).

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Offline Serendipity

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #14 on: February 05, 2021, 09:33:24 am »
I saw a YouTube video of a modern Austrian Mint worker scanning for defects in gold Philharmonic coins with a simple convex glass lens. The lens wasn’t mounted in a frame with a handle. I don’t see anything anachronistic about ancient Greek and Roman coin engravers similarly using a rock crystal lens to assist them in the finer details of their work. Quartz crystal is one of the most abundant minerals on earth. We underestimate the resourcefulness of the ancients.

Offline JBF

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #15 on: February 05, 2021, 01:34:58 pm »
you need to focus a telescope on a distant object, Galileo would do it on a star.  or so I have heard.

Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #16 on: February 05, 2021, 05:43:09 pm »
That's correct; he saw Jupiter's moons moving, and rightly saw that as evidence that the earth might be moving round the sun. But it's a big step from a single lens to either a telescope or a microscope.
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Offline Serendipity

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Re: How Did The Romans Engrave Extreme Detail Into Their Coin Dies?
« Reply #18 on: February 06, 2021, 08:12:45 pm »
Interestingly, Dimitris Plantzos argues in his ‘Crystals and Lenses in the Graeco-Roman World’ (1997) that “ancient craftsmen, like gem cutters, had to rely on skill and experience rather than magnification implements to do their work.” The academic paper has some notable mentions in the comments.

 

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