Nineteenth-century strip gauge

While the Royal Mint Museum has a very good collection of coins to reflect its work over the centuries, the machinery and equipment used to make coins has not survived to the same extent. A few medieval dies have been preserved and sets of weights from the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Anne have also come down to us but the gauge illustrated here, dated 1805, is nevertheless one of the oldest surviving pieces of equipment connected with the production of coins at the Royal Mint.

It was used to measure the thickness of gold and silver strip and, as is often the case with equipment that is simple in function and design, gauges of a very similar type continued to be used until well into the second half of the last century.