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The Story of an Aluminum Token
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Many times, if you ask around on the Internet about something, you will find the only information available is a few blurbs that don't tell you much. Though they're doing their best to help, everybody keeps pointing you back to these same blurbs. Perhaps it's some remnant of an online auction, or maybe a terse entry in the history of some company.
The Internet is a great resource, but there are still huge gaps in its catalog of knowledge. Wikipedia is handy on occasion, but consumers of its information often fail to recognize the hidden interests that drive some of the content; people with agendas position themselves as gatekeepers of information that really ought to be in more neutral hands. While they take pains to conceal their affiliations, one or more mega-corporations (*ahem* Microsoft) have gotten caught trying to steer the kind of information that appears in Wikipedia. One can only wonder who else might be using this supposedly-neutral source of information to advance their own interests, perhaps at the expense of the public good.
So anyway, I dug up this aluminum token one day. At first, I thought it was a silver dollar (I wish), but I realized it was too thin and too light.
It was tough to find any information about it. There existed a few pictures, but nobody knew a date.
There had to be some way to piece together decent information. The history of aluminum-- including relevant biographies-- is readily accessible on the Internet, having fallen pretty much into "common knowledge" territory. As for the history of aluminum tokens, that requires some research.
Aluminum metal was once very rare on the market. Aluminum cannot be reduced from aqueous solution, since it is too strongly electropositive. The water in the electrolyte will decompose into hydrogen at the cathode before Al3+ will come out as metal. In other words, the Al3+ will remain in solution, unchanged.
For a long time, the refining of aluminum was therefore something of a laboratory curiosity.
That was to change, and with it would change the history of the entire world. This amazing discovery came from a young man named Charles Hall. With only a bachelor's degree in chemistry (sorry, credentialists...), Hall invented a revolutionary process to refine aluminum from a solution of bauxite in molten cryolite (Na3AlF6). We ought to pause here to remember that Hall's invention was primarily the result of amateur science, conducted mostly in his woodshed.[1] His invention was an electrolytic process, but it didn't require an aqueous medium. Thus, water decomposition was no longer an obstacle to large-scale production. Of course, the temperatures involved in the Hall Process are scorching, and the currents involved are enormous (100,000 amps!), but such is the working of heavy industry.
It was in 1888 that Hall, backed by some financiers including Alfred Hunt, opened the first large-scale aluminum refinery in the United States. Not coincidentally, Russel Rulau (United States Trade Tokens 1866-1889) states that it was about 1890 when aluminum trade tokens started to appear en masse.[2] If you find an aluminum trade token, it's not likely to have been made before 1890, and it's extremely unlikely to have been made before 1888. Another source[3] places the earliest date at 1893. We can speculate here; it could be that aluminum didn't become well-known to the general public until the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.
After that, aluminum tokens were popular well into the 1930's and beyond.
So... where does this leave us with the sewing machine token?
First, the token depicts a treadle-powered sewing machine. It is clearly not an electric model. The company's own website says that they started producing electric machines in the 1920's.[4]
The White Sewing Machine Company's site also indicates that they began making furniture-style cabinets in 1900. This was an industry first. The sewing machine depicted on the token has just such a housing. It's probably a then-current production model, as this was an advertising token that proclaimed "the White is sold everywhere". If an advertiser wants someone to go out to the store and buy something, he's probably not going to waste limited ad space showing a model that's no longer in production. Come to think of it, if it's the year 1900 and you just introduced the first sewing machine to have its own furniture-type cabinet, then why not coin an aluminum token to advertise it!
Third, I was able to learn of another White's Sewing Machine token bearing one of the same slogans mine has: "The White is King". That token dates from the year 1900 and was apparently for the Exposition Universalle Paris.[5]
Finally, there is another clue that comes only from having looked at numerous ads in old Montgomery Ward catalogs and similar books. That clue is the overall style of the ironwork on the base of the sewing machine. It has a very strong, late-1890's-to-1910 feel to it.
Based on the evidence we have at the moment, it's reasonable to place this token between 1900 and 1910. That's another mystery solved, at least well enough for the time being.
Notes:
1. American Chemical Society, "Commercialization of Aluminum", online article
2. Leonard, R.D. "Collecting U.S. Tokens: Challenges and Rewards". Chicago Coin Club, 1986. Online article at http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/cut.html.
3. Rounsavill, B. "A Penny For Your Thoughts: the P.H. Morris Token". The Half Moon: Newsletter of the Newtown Historical Association 7(1): January 2008. Online at http://www.newtownhistoric.org/NHANewsletter(01-08).pdf
4. White Sewing Machine Company website at http://www.whitesewing.com/history.asp
5. Exonumia.com auction sale catalog, 2006, online at http://www.exonumia.com/sale11/allb.htm
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