Stamping gold bars. New York Assay Office, 1916.
RogerB
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Related to the gold bar thread, here is a 1916 photo of men at the New York Assay Office stamping small gold bars with weight, fineness, tracking number, and the NYAO logo. Every bar regardless of size was stamped.
More information will be found in the book From Mine to Mint.
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Not the most comfortable seats for the workers. I hope they didn't have to do that all day long.
Wow! I love it.
That's where they worked all day long. Start at 8am, coffee break at 9:30 or 10am, lunch at 12:30pm afternoon break at 3 off at 5pm. Other breaks for "necessary things" were discouraged. Non-management employees required written permission to leave the building during the work day. There were performance standards for the number of pieces stamped per day/month.
Appears to be a posed pic, the bar on the left does not qualify as "small" to me, but I get it, cool pic.
Nearly all "working" photos of this period and before were posed. Glass plates/film was not sensitive enough to permit indoor "action" photos without substantial supplemental lighting and exposures of several seconds. Notice that the incandescent task lights are off and that diffuse light is coming from upper right-front. (It was considered legitimate practice to pose sports action photos so long as they replicated the original action. Baseball players and umpires were sometimes asked to stay after a game and r4ecreate a close play. Often a photo editor would add a baseball to the negative or remove/replace part of the background for dramatic effect.
These men, and others, stamped all the bars - large and small. The largest gold bars were about 400 T. oz. The largest silver bars were about 2,000 T. oz.
Yep, I noticed the lights not illuminated, too.
What is the angled display in front of the striker on the right? I suppose the items immediately below are common dies to strike with.
Where's the scale?
Nice pic.
The angled card in front of the worker appears to be a form with a three-word title, and hand written columns below. Here's best I could get off the image. (The 4x5 negative is in LoC and might have more detail.)
No information about the balances.
Wow... what tedious work.... surprised that they had men doing that (not being sexist - most jobs like that, at that time, were given to women)....Cheers, RickO
Look at that bar the guy in the background is stamping. If that is gold, it is a roughly 400 ounce bar, or roughly 32 pounds. I have hefted one of those, and it is not easy to pick up.
Thanks for posting the pic - interesting.
Guy on the right must be an apprentice - got all the small bars.
Could the angled display be the serial #/weight of the bars in that lot currently being stamped? Wasn't there slight variation in how fine each bar is as well?
@CaptHenway ....Good point... I too have held bars of that size, and they are remarkably heavy for what looks like a small size. Cheers, RickO
Every bar was slightly different in weight, which is why this was piece-work.
When examining the gold bars the Nazi's stole during the war, the accompanying inventory lists were precise and detailed, although sampling revealed that actual weight and purity sometimes did not match the lists. (See the JNR issue Summer 2013. Issue 3: Saving Manila’s Golden Treasure; Silver Divers of Corregidor, 1942; and U.S. Mint & Nazi Gold, for details.)
Awesome thread!
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Interesting picture.
I see the 1916 calendar, but the hairstyles and clothing to me suggests a time period much later.
I know this doesn't make sense, but I'm just picturing the men's styles of all the silent movies I've watched (from the 1910's) and these two characters definitely do not fit that time period.
I'm thinking it was staged.
That guy's hairstyle on the left looks like he could be from 1970 to 2017,
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Nice, Thanks for trying. :thumbsup
My photo was made at LoC by photographing an 8x10 B&W print in their archives. I cropped out the left 1/3 which has an older fellow amid a clutter of boxes on a trolley. The original glass negatives of LoC materials are not available to individuals....only the LoC staff and then only after considerable discussion and justification. (My camera was a Nikon D-70s with 35mm lens, f8 @ 1/250 sec, hand-held. Not much but it's what I have.)
I thought the same thing until I took a look at the pants they are wearing. Those have a 1916 look. I'm sure the photo does date from 1916. It's sharpness also makes it look later but remember that this was taken and probably printed by a professional photographer of that era.
The photo is one of several made at the NYAO. Photos were by "Press Illustration Service" with a 1916 copyright. Some of the photos were printed in the New York Sun issue of January 2, 1916 in an article titled “Where Uncle Sam Shovels His Gold Like Grain.” However, the photos were uncredited in the article, which likely means that Treasury Dept. hired the photographer and wrote most of the article to publicize immense amounts of gold flowing into the country.
I don't get why the LoC staff has to consider, discuss and justify retrieving a glass negative for examination by a requester.
What?
It's a library. The library here in town retrieves stuff all the time. They are glad to help.
What good is it, if ya can't look at it once in a while? Crazy.
LoC is not a "library." It is the official US repository for millions of original items. The glass negatives are each unique and carefully protected from all potential damage. LoC (and NARA/ SI, etc.) are gradually making high quality scans of their originals; this is a long, tedious process. Even then, limitations of digital tonal range do not recover all of the information available in a photographic negative or Kodachrome transparency.
[Some employees at NASA compared modern digital images of the lunar surface with old orbital film photos of the same areas. The film images were far richer in detail, information and utility.]
I figured you'd say that.
It's the Mausoleum of Congress where millions of original items are never examined because the LoC staff has to "consider, discuss and justify".
"[Some employees at NASA compared modern digital images of the lunar surface with old orbital film photos of the same areas. The film images were far richer in detail, information and utility.]"
Tangent time. Sounds like you don't disagree,. Certainly a man of your influence and stature can get LoC to produce.
LoC = Crazy, ya walk in, ask for something and get denied. Hardly a Library of Congress.
Anyone can go to the LoC, get a research card and go anywhere and ask for anything - much like NARA and other archives. There are copies, microfilm and many original materials available. The Manuscript Division alone has millions of original documents anyone can examine, photograph and photocopy in person. Only a very few things, such as original negatives and glass plates, are restricted to use of prints or copy negatives. Fragile documents are also in protected storage, but copies are available for daily use.
Your apparent negative attitude suggests you haven't tried to use any of these facilities. Oh, and it's all free.
IT'S TWO WORKMAN AT A BENCH, FCS. LORD KNOWS NO-ONE SHOULD EVER EXAMINE THIS GLASS NEGATIVE WITHOUT CONSIDERATION AND REVIEW BY THE LoC.
THe original glass negatives of LoC materials are not available to individuals....only the LoC staff and then only after considerable discussion and justification
Self serving, go sell another book, yuck.
Nope. I'm 1000 miles away, glad you enjoy LoC use. Let's all live by LoC. Have fun. Crazy.
Chill.
@RogerB
Thanks again, so much, for sharing this information.
I always find it interesting and am always willing to learn from our past.
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I think you are missing the forest for the trees. Of course they aren't going to hand over fragile and irreplaceable material with no regard, would you?
Collector, occasional seller
epcjimi1 - The frustration is understandable, and criticism is OK. The rules places have about access to originals - often unique items - are their attempt to preserve the information for future generations. We don't know what improvements technology will bring. A century ago, paintings were authenticated based on surface characteristics. Today, archivists and researchers can use multispectral data to learn much about how the paintings were created and if there are other images lying below the visible surface.
Maybe there is more information in that 4x5 glass negative of "two workmen at a bench" that we can know today; but if I drop it, then what....?
Please PM me if there is anything I can help you with. Many local and State archives have numismatically interesting materials that have not been touched for decades. Family papers from collectors and businesses abound and many can offer insight into how the hobby worked long ago.
Enough from me.
@epcjimi1 said: "Self serving, go sell another book, yuck".
This nonsensical attack is the only "yuck" in this thread. Reminds me of a response you deserve that I regularly heard on SNL decades ago: "Jane, you ignorant..." Roger has "class" and ignored your ignorant remarks.
We should ALL be thankful there are numismatic researchers like RogerB (and many others) who spend their life digging up neat stuff like this and SHARING IT. I'll bet you have not even heard of many of his books or even read one. Check out Renaissance of American Coinage or From Mine to Mint.
Over the years tons of important numismatic records have been pitched in the trash by our government workers who should have had their hands cut off (That's the Arab part of me; and IMO "yucky posters" would only loose some fingers)! One day you may understand why there are "rare book rooms, locked cages for documents, etc. When I was in college I checked out "The History of the American Banknote Company." Every page of engravings was missing from the book!
Why don't you man-up and apologize to Roger for your post. I can only hold my breath for about a minute.