Episode 8: Cashed Out

Or was he the sinews of his roguedy, money being gone to and his pretended services all blasted, he had little hopes left, and, being of a very cowardly nature, the apprehension of what he might come to struck him into a fit of sickness, and wrought so strong upon his brain that he was sometimes delirious, in which fits he was continually raving that the devil was come for him. In such frightful whimsies these intervals of lunacy, he endeavored to improve to a height sufficient to put off his

approaching trial, counterfeiting the madman as well he could. Chowner could have been faking it. After all, Faking it was something that he was very, very good at, but he also might not have been. When Chowner had arrived at Newgate in October of the previous year, he was confident that he could figure a way out of this jam.

But Chowner didn't know what he was up against. When he arrived there, he made very light of the matter, bragging he had a trick left yet, But when he heard how many witnesses came in against him, he began to droop. Challenger had by now spent months in Newgate, filthy, disgusting Newgate, and without the money that had bullied him through his last into Newgate, things were bleak. It was winter, cold and wet, and the walls wet with damp. He

slept on straw covering a bare board. He couldn't afford to send out for nicer or even palatable food, and he was drinking the filthy, disease riddled water that everyone else was. And in that time he'd seen his hopes extinguished one after the other, until all he was left with was the dark fact of his impending death. It was enough to send someone mad, but in all honesty, it didn't matter whether Challenger was really suffering a mental health episode. It's not like there's an insanity plea in

the seventeenth century. For one thing and for another time for William Challoner was running out, but alas all would not do, the sessions came in which his long concealed villainies were to be laid open to the world, and justice, which often had attempted as had often been baffled by him, was now ready with her iron hands to break in two pieces for I Heart Radio, I'm Linda Rodriguez mccrabie, and this is Newton's Law. Episode eight, our final episode

cashed out You're Act one Chaloner's defense. While Chaloner wasted away in Newgate, Isaac Newton was busy. Challenger's trial would take place at the next sessions, although when exactly that would be was uncertain, but Newton needed the time to make sure that his case against Challenger was rock solid.

Newton spent the first few months of deep in the Challenger case, collecting the depositions of scores of witnesses who could testify that they had seemed Challenger plying as terrible craft and crucially, Newton made sure that these witnesses weren't going to do a runner or get cold feet when

the sessions came around. Tom Levinson, author of Newton and the Counterfeiter, One of the things I think Newton learns from this first defeat is that he has to arrest and confine the people who have the goods on Challenger and offer them, you know, whatever it takes to get them to tell the story he wanted to hear about Challenger and not let him get away. You get to

a position where challengers techniques could could influence them. Newton's principal informant was Thomas Carter, the man who had been in with Challenger on the mult ticket scam. Carter knew that giving the warden all the information he could was his only chance of making it out of Newgate alive. That all his hopes lay in giving Newton everything he

needed to hang Challenger. I can produce another to justify besides myself, and I believe I can produce some of his work all this which he has said, I can bring good witness to justify it. I humbly lay myself at your honest fate, hoping your honest favor as I shall endeavor to deserve it. Carter became Newton's man on the inside, and he connected Newton with a bunch of informants. And one of the things Newton did was put informants

and spies basically next to Chaloner in the cells. And Chaloner was clever enough to know that this was likely to happen, so he basically disdained the first couple that Newton put in and and sort of diagnosed them as potential spies. But Newton just kept putting people in, and finally Chaloner actually began to speak more openly to one of Newton's agents, John Ignacious Lawson, was a former doctor

turned coiner who was desperate to be abuse. Lawson told Newton that he was starving and that since he had been locked up, some of his past confederates had stolen all of his money and property and are of one of his children to death and sent the rest of begging. Lawson was the perfect spy. He and Chaloner had never worked together, so that meant that Challenger wasn't worried that

Lawson could testify against him directly. Lawson was able to get close to Challeoner, even sleeping in the same cell. Lawson was later tried for coining in October, but he got off on a technicality a matter of jurisdiction or and this seems like it's more likely a matter of past usefulness. Lawson told Newton who Challenger was worried would testify against him. Carter, of course, and his wife Catherine, and the Holloways, but also some new names. This gave

Newton more people to find to testify against Challenger. Lawson was also the one who told Newton that Challenger was quote feigning madness in order to delay his trial. William Chandoner, being my chamber mate, owned to me that when the sessions came, and if he found himself in danger, he would pretend himself sick. Challoner obviously didn't know that Lawson was telling Newton everything, but even if he had, there was probably little he could have done to save himself.

He didn't even really know what he was being charged with, and he had little idea of who else beyond Thomas Carter and Thomas Holloway. Isaac Newton might be bringing his witness. Like most people awaiting trial at Newgate, Challoner would have been conducting his own defense. At this time, people accused of most crimes were not permitted a defense lawyer. The only exception was in cases of high treason, which technically counterfeiting was this was to curb abuse of the charge

by the sovereign, but counterfeiting wasn't that type of high treason. Evidently, so coiners and clippers still didn't get defense lawyers. So Chaloner was grasping at straws. Channer wrote to Secretary of State James Vernon and too Newton to claim that the whole malt ticket scam was Carter's plot to ensnare Chander in some quote mischief. What's more, Carter, he said, was

nothing more than a rogue and a criminal. For I have such a man to be evidence against me that will not stick at anything, to swear to get his own liberty. He was once taken for coining and stealing horses and put him warrick gail. He has been six times in the pillory in London and one in the country for forgery and perjury. He robbed his master and was put in the counter and got out in woman's clothes. He has gone by several names. He has been in

most gails in England. I discovered and convicted him of forgery but he got out of jail, so I know he will do me all the hurt he can. Challenger tried to appeal directly to Newton, the man he saw as both the author of all of his sufferings and the only person who could end them. I beg you will not continue your displeasure against me, for I have suffered very much. I wholly throw myself upon your great goodness.

I m, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant. His letters to Newton were increasingly desperate, increasingly willing to give up whatever he could to save himself. Sir, in obedience to your worship, I will give you the best account I can remember. God shall be glad to do any service to the government that is in my power. If I intended to have anything to do in counterfeiting of mult tickets, then I des God all my team. I never received my soul. I have been guilty of no

crime these six years. If he ever said that he could engrave plates and make coin, well that was jest. It was a joke. That whole thing in front of Parliament, accusing the Mint of corruption. He'd been forced to testify honest, and this whole mult ticket scam. This was obviously worked up by that David Davis to get money out of the government. Oh, for God's sake, do not for suspicions and suggestions seem real truth. And so let me go

murthered out of the world. Oh, let your great goodness be known to the world by being merciful to me. Chalder's mental state was clearly deteriorating by the time he wrote to Justice Raylton, the local magistrates supervising the case. He said, I am so very ill, I cannot hold my Newton of course, never responded to any of Challenger's letters.

Why would he. He had all that he needed. The rope wound from the testimonies of so many people was around Challenger's neck already, It just needed a good tightening. On March one, the Grand Jury met at the guild Hall, the sort of city hall for the city of London. This was a hearing to determine whether the indictments against Challengers should go ahead and to give Challenger a chance

to plead. He might have been surprised to learn then and there that he was being charged with three counts of counterfeiting offenses dating back seven years and not as he thought the Malt lottery ticket scam. At first he refused to speak a last ditch effort to lay his trial, then he claimed he had been mad these last three weeks, to which a worthy justice on the bench made answer that to his knowledge, he had been so for as

many years. Challenger eventually pleaded not guilty. His trial took place just a few hours later, this time at the Old Bailey, the open air courtroom attached to Newgate. The judge south Field Level was infamously ruthless and corrupt, and was no believer in innocent until proven guilty, which, to be fair, wasn't really a thing back then. From the moment Challenger was described as notorious by the judge, he must have known things were not going to go well.

He was put upon his trial, wherein there were a whole cloud of witnesses against him. Also, William Chalon told me that he intended as more late offenses. Once swore that she had seen him make some thousand pistols, and I told him he would come to be hanged for it as price. One another that she had seen him do the like by guineas Helena would give Thomas Twin that he knew him to have made abundance of money of all sorts. I could be saved something very bright

lined before him, which look a plate. In short, the evidence was very plain and positive to all which he made but an indifferent defense, but was very saucy in the court, affronting mister record a diverse times. Challoner's trial probably didn't last more than half an hour. We know that he would have had only his own word to defend himself. That he would have stood at the bar, the cold march air at his back, facing the judge and jury on a raised platform in front of him.

But he would have stood as whit nous after witness. Some people he'd once have called friends would place the dies and the molds in his hands where the pewter shillings or the gilded guineas, and they would say they saw him do it. He was innocent. He said he was set up. The court did not agree. Act two. The end, Challoner didn't take his sentencing well. All those times he had slipped through the iron fingers of justice, he probably couldn't believe that this was it. After his condemnation,

he was continually crying out. He struggled and flunked about for life like a whale struck with a harping iron, so that the warrant for his exit ution being signed, he was amongst the number appointed to die. When that fatal story reached his ears, he bellowed and ruled worse than an Irish woman at a funeral. Nothing but murder, murder,

murder was to be heard from him. Nothing could be thought on to make him take that patiently which he must embrace, whether he would or no. And indeed a man who makes new conscience in his life may well tremble at the approaches of death. Newton received one last desperate letter from Chaloner just two days before his execution. Oh dear sir, nobody can say of me but you. Chaloner had crossed Isaac Newton. He had insulted him, He had insulted the crown. Oh God, my god, I shall

be murdered unless you saved me. Newton rarely forgave, and he damn sure I didn't forget. Oh I hope God will move your heart with mercy and pity to do this thing for me. Newton never wrote back. You're near murdered, humble servant, w Challoner. The night before Chaloner was strung up on the tyburn tree. The sexton of St. Sepulchro Without Newgate, the church just outside Newgate's walls, ring a handbell under his window and the windows of the others

faded to die the next day. As he rang the bell, he repeated the same poem that hundreds of other condemned people had heard before this night. All you that in the condemned hold, do lie, prepare you for to morrow you shall die. Watch all and pray. The hour is drawing near that you before the Almighty must appear. Examine well yourself and time repent that you may not to eternal flames be set. And when Saint Sepica's bell tomorrow tones, the Lord above have mercy on your soul. Chaloner probably

didn't sleep. At noon the next day the morning bells of St. Sepulchro Raine, Chaloner was ushered into the Condemned room at Newgate, where his iron shackles were removed and hands bound the simple rope. He was in haggard, probably coughing and undoubtedly itching with lice. Shortly afternoon, Jowner left Newgate Prison for the last time. He was bundled into an open sled dragged by a horse, open so that everyone could see him and shame him. The procession paused

at Saint Seppel. First, the vicar was obligated to once again remind them and everyone else watching that they were about to die. All good people, pray heartily unto God for these poor sinners who are now going to their death, for whom this great bell doth toe. You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears, Ask mercy of the Lord for the salvation of your own souls. Lord,

have mercy upon you, Christ, have mercy upon you. This was the atmosphere that the authorities wanted, This solemnity, this quaking terror, this public shame. This was what was supposed to keep other people from attempting the same crimes. What they got, however, was often more like a carnival. As Chaloner and his fellow condemned made their way through the city to the Tyburn Tree, people lined the streets and

hung from the windows. Some people threw things at the passing procession, although what they threw depended on the crime.

When they convicted, were well liked, women blew kisses, and according to one contemporary writer, many of the condemned were quote on good terms with the mom and jokes were exchanged between the men who were going to be hanged and the men who deserved to be pickpockets and thieves bide their trade throughout the crowds, even as the example of what could happen to them if they were caught processed a pact. He's going to use bush gold MESA challenger, however,

was probably not catching kisses or joking. Counterfeiters were often among the most reviled of criminals. People hated them for making life difficult for everyone else and for undermining trust in the currency and the economy. He'd have been cursed

at hit with mud and rotten food or worse. Though the Tyburn Tree was less than three miles from Newgate, it took the procession more than two hours to reach it, owing to the crowds and to that final stop at the pub nearest the tree for one last point, Hey hey, hey game. An even larger crowd awaited the notorious Challenger when he arrived at the tree. Luckiest were those who rented pews and benches nearest the scaffold. Everyone else had

to stand on tiptoe to witness the hanging. The Tiber and Triple tree, three horizontal beams eighteen feet in the air, was capable of executing twenty four prisoners all at once, but it rarely had so many that you deserve you black hearted filling. It's unknown how many others were executed the day Challenger was, although he wasn't alone. When the moment came. The Challenger stood before the tree and the

crowd's hands bound, still proclaiming his innocence. Kill them longer, I am innocent, Lord, to have mercy upon you, Christ, have mercy upon you murdered, but perjury. I need justice and pretense of law. And by the warden of the mint himself, you know that Challenger didn't get away with it, and you know already that Isaac Newton wasn't there to

watch him, haye, but that anonymous biographer was. Within weeks of Challenger's execution, the pamphlet was printed and being sold on the same streets which Chaloner had only lately sold his counterfeit coins. It concluded, thus lived and thus died, A man who had he squared his talent by the rules of justice and integrity, might have been useful to the Commonwealth. But as he followed only the Dictates of Vice was as a rotten member cut off epilogue money

for nothing. So can I get points of London Pride please, and I will come over here and pay with my Apple pet. Yeah, okay, I put my past code in here. There we go, just like magic, wonderful. Thank you so so much. Okay. So I am just bought my point at the Devereaux, which is a very historic pub in central London. Um. This used to be the Grecian coffee House, which was where Isaac Newton, Samuel Peeps so many other people would come um to chat about royal society stuff.

So I'm also sitting in the Isaac Newton booth, and I've got a great picture here of Isaac Newton on the wall. We've got some some paintings of him and his telescope. This is definitely a place that's dedicated to Newton. Here at this pub, there aren't newspapers on the table. There's pamphlets, mostly because everybody's reading stuff on their phone.

And the thing that I just paid with this digital representation of the money in my bank account, that would just be bonkers to the seventeenth century coffee lever or pubgoer. But that's all the stuff on the surface, because lots

of other things haven't changed. Those questions about money, about the kinds of things that could be money, whether it's bits of hand hammered metal with the King's head on them, or paper or lotto tickets, those ideas coalesced into the utterly bizarre fact that I can use my phone to

pay for my points or my dishes of coffee. Can you tell that that was like my first time doing it, because now I genuinely don't know what my actual waldy exists for anyway, A big theme of this podcast has been that money is only valuable because we all agree, all believe that it has value. We thought gold and silver had value, then it does, so it made sense to use that as a medium of exchange. Then we believe that the word of the government was actually enough.

In three FDR took the US off the gold standard, two years after Britain had already done the same. But the fact that US money is backed not by a random precious metal, but by a governmental guarantee that's what's called fiat currency, is part of the reason that people have recently been talking about a trillion dollar coin, a one trillion dollar coin, a gazillion dollar debt limit, removing Congress from the equation. Those are among democrats proposed solutions

to the debt ceiling standoff. The idea is that the US is once again about to hit its debt ceiling. Now remember the national debt thing we invented back in episode two, and by we I mean English Parliament. Anyway, the US reaching its debt ceiling the amount of money that it's allowed to borrow to keep the lights on. This happens a bit. The conflict happens when Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Then government shutdown ensues. But

the Treasury Secretary can theoretically solve that. Janet Yellen could bypass Congress an issue a single one trillion dollar coin made from platinum. She would then deposit it in the Federal Reserve just like it's a real account, and thus provide the country with enough money to pay its bills,

no more borrowing necessary. As an one coin that is worth more than the GDPs of Greece, Colombia, Poland a whole bunch of other countries, a coin that is essentially performing, albeit legally the same trick that Challenge did making money from nothing. As of this recording, Yellen hasn't and the Biden administration very probably won't meant that coin, although the deadlock in Congress is certainly making this idea more appealing now.

Another reason that we're talking about the trillion dollar coin, beyond the marre fact that because of the currency it's possible, is that other thing that was becoming important in Newton's time, mass media. The trillion dollar coin idea was floated by the White House privately back in two thousand and eleven, but it wouldn't really be a thing now if it

hadn't been given air on multiple platforms. Paul Krugman, in an opinion for The New York Times Bloomberg Podcasts, declaring it's not a joke hashtag meant the coin, among many others, that these kinds of debates about monetary policy shouldn't just happen amongst the bunch of old, rich white dudes who make the policy most definitely has it's antecedents and pamphlets like Peter Bondo's humble suggestions to the Money Here's the money coin with the m O canal to be made

exactly a long and William Chaloner's proposals to fix the coins now England have been more grieved with clipton counterfeit money. So yeah, more oxygen for good ideas and boo, more oxygen for bad ones. So this trillion dollar coin is it a good idea or a bad idea? Janet Yellen certainly thinks it's a bad idea. She said so. And if your entire currency is based on trust, magic ng money out of literally nothing doesn't do much to shore

up that trust. It doesn't help the inflation situation, and it also rather uncomfortably blurs the lines between monetary policy, which is meant to be independent of politics, and fiscal policy, which is laid out by elected politicians. On the other hand, if anyone wants to get that old counterfeit forged fired up, now is the time. All this talk about trust and made up coins and national debt has me thinking, what

if you don't want to trust the government anymore? Could something else be money even if it's not backed by that governmental guarantee. How about a bunch of code? How about cryptocurrency? Cryptocurrencies are exciting because they're decentralized not tied to or controlled by a government or a central bank.

The first cryptocurrencies started appearing in the mid nine es, but e cashed had a hard time getting off the ground because you can be all, this is money, trust us people, but people won't unless they have a compelling reason to. And then came Bitcoin, which solved one of the main problems of digital currency, making it trustable face. Bitcoin uses blockchain, which is a huge chain linked database

that acts as a ledger of transactions proof of value. Notably, blockchain can be used for any data really, not just financial services. The database is maintained by many different people, so there's no central agency that monitors or controls it. And it's open, transparent, immutable, but it's not completely bulletproof. As WILLIAMS. Chaloner recognized back in stur Si, a big seismic change in the landscape of really important stuff like money is also going to throw up new opportunities for

exploiting that landscape. Tom Levinson and when you do something new in the world of finance, some people will understand it better than others. Unscrupulous people who understand it well will take advantage of those others. When it's something really new, and interesting. Um. Not even the people who think they know with the best you know, will grasp all the assibilities, including the negative possibilities, the unintended consequences. And that's something

that recurs over and over again. Challenger forged bank notes and lottery tickets because these were new, weird, untried things and he could, and some modern day challengers are basically doing the same thing. Consider the story of one Coin. Back in one Coin was going to be bigger than Bitcoin. Founder Ruga Ignatova, from the stage at Wembley Arena in North London to thousands of hyped up investors, promised that

it would be. This network was created to become and to fuel the growth of one coin, which I strongly believe will be the number one cryptocurrency worldwide. What one coin actually was was a massive multi level marketing scan them better known as a Ponzi scheme. One coin didn't have what Bitcoin did, a blockchain, and without it, the numbers the quote value of those one coins were meaningless. One coin itself could say it was worth whatever they wanted it to be. Now, no one knew this, though,

so people invested in it. Lots of people Exactly how much money one Coin took in It's hard to say. Some reports say four billion euros. Authors put it as high as fifteen billion euros. This was money from regular people, people who thought they were making a wise investment in an up and coming market. On October two, thousand seventeen, doctor Rugia Ignatova boarded a flight from Sophia, Bulgaria to Athens, and that was the last anyone saw or heard of

her or the billions of euros she stole. Again. Kaig Natova more or less got away with it. Where is Isaac Newton when you need him him? All? Right? Well, Newton might have sniffed out this kind of fraud or he might have gotten caught up in it, just like he did back in seventeen twenty. So what made one Coin plausible, what made people think it was real, is because the idea of making a lot of money very quickly is always appealing, but also because of the financial

instruments that were emerging in Newton's time. And Newton may have really understood the principles of things like representational money and speculation, but that didn't stop him from getting burned and what would be called the south Sea Bubble, so a bubble is when an asset or commodity suddenly spikes in value far above its quote real value. That's the bubble inflating, and then justice suddenly pops value plummeting. I

think the dot com bubble or housing. Why bubbles happen is a big part of behavioral economics, but suffice to say they're hard to predict and even harder to ride out. The south Sea Bubble did have approximate cause, however. In seventeen twenty, the House of Lords gave the south Sea Company, a joint stock company, a monopoly on trade with South America in exchange for seven million pounds to finance a

war with you guessed it, France. The money also went to underwrite the National Debt, that thing that had just been created in sixteen ninety four with the Bank of England. Overnight shares in the south Sea Company exploded in value. I think, like the whole game stop situation, but Poland, the national debt and a bunch of literal big wigs,

and you've got the idea. Tom Levinson explains, the bubble was just this huge social and cultural carnival for a while, and people went money and the fabulous cartoons and satirical poems and nasty moralistic plays and all this the center around this way. Greed and money mania took over England at the time, but lots of people got snared in it. The problem was the south Sea Company wasn't really doing

any actual trading, and soon the bubble popped. The richest man in England, to Duke to Portland, lost his shirt and ultimately his life to speculations in Sausia bubble. And to me, the most striking thing is that, you know, the one person in Europe you could count on to understand the underlying mathematics of the financial transaction being proposed in Sausia bubble, person who really really knew, you know, how to calculate that. Yeah, in fact, the things that

were happening to south Sea stock were just unsustainable. That man was Isaac Newton, and he lost a ton in the bubble. He too got caught in the emotions of the moment and the desire for wealth in the most in some ways personally humilia eating way. You know, he had had investments in the south Sea Company from for many years before and it made a good tidy, respectable profit on it. And when the bubble started inflating in

UH in the spring of seventeen. He looked at his growing profit and said, you know, I've made enough money and sold well the share. But the bubble continued to expand and it went to more than double the price to be sold his shares. That and that apparently drove Newton bunkers. So he went back in at the very top of the market. And he kept buying for another

two months as the market hovered near its top. And you know, his last purchase of South Seas shares was like two weeks before the crash and uh and he lost tens of thousands of pounds, which is millions of pounds in twenty one century money. Now, don't be too sad for poor Newton. He wasn't left destitute. He still had a very good gig with the Royal Mint, although he was no longer the warden. Not long after Challenger's execution,

Thomas Neil, the useless master of the Mint, died. Newton, who had basically done his job and more during the recoinage, was offered the position he started on Christmas Day. No more catching for him, although he probably didn't mind. Though the two positions were on similar levels of authority and salary. The master also took a fee for every pound of metal coined at the mint. Newton had done that for years, squirreling it away in besting some doing very well for himself,

but obviously losing his shirt was pretty irritating. He apparently said to his niece, who he was very close to, and you know, I can predict the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of crowds, madness of the people. I think it's the word. And you know what's funny about that quote is, of course he was one of the people. He couldn't predict his own madness, but that was what so galled him. He lost control. You know, this famously tight le wound and regid personality

lost his reasoning mind around money for a while. But the whole speculation thing, the money being made handover fist, the growing economy that had some other attendant effects. Now this isn't exactly causal or linear, but here's some of what was happening. People, thanks to these exciting financial instruments, had more money. More money meant quite literally more problems. The more stuff and property people had, the more, they wanted to protect it and others wanted to steal it.

In the years after Newton was running his operations, it was clear that something more needed to be done to deter crime, especially property crime. But as we've said over and over, there was no agency charged with dealing with crime. So what's the eighteenth century lawmaker to do in the face of rising property crime? Lee Goal Historian Harry Potter explains that was when you really got the growth of

capital punishment being used routinely for minor property offenses. Because John John Rotfron some sixteen nineties said that the sole end of government is the preservation of property, and property was undefended already a significant number of crimes were punishable by death. Counterfeiting obviously one of them. But after the Waltham Black Act of seventeen twenty three, upwards of two hundred offenses such a pickpocketing, shoplifting, arson attempting, arson poaching

all became capital offenses. But even with all those new capital crimes, through the nineteenth century, counterfeiting was one of the top reasons people were executed in England and Wales between eighteen o five and eighteen eighteen. One out of every five executed criminals was a convicted forger or counterfeiter. That stature shot up to one out of three in London and the adjoining Middlesex County. The act was repealed about a century later, after it was clear that the

threat of death didn't actually do much to deter crime. Policeman, on their hand, could be helpful, maybe maybe not. For all Isaac Newton's great work and stamping out counterfeit coins, fake coin makers didn't just suddenly stop production because Isaac Newton was on the case. Capital punishment didn't work. Policing only sort of worked. Counterfeiting isn't called the second oldest

profession for nothing. Back in two thousand seventeen, we all of us living in Britain, we're supposed to trade in our old one pound coins. These coins had been around since and they read around the edges decas at Taman, But that decoration and a safe guard had evidently not been enough. The reason we needed new coins was because, according to an audit in two thousand fourteen, as much as three of the coins in circulation were fakes. The new twelve sided one pound coin is the most secure

coin in the world. It has a number of features that make it much more difficult to counterfeit. It has a bimetallic composition of two colors, with a gold color nickel brass outer and a silver colored nickel plated inner. It has a latent image on the front. The changes from a pound symbol to the number one when the coin is seen from different angles. The coins design reflects

United Kingdom's heritage and superb craftsmanship. The new high tech coin was meant to be impossible to fake, except it wasn't. Within a year of the coin's release, reports of fake twelve sided coins began circulating. These figs were less detailed, less precise than the real thing, but they did the trick. It almost didn't matter if they were real or not, as long as they were being traded. Now. There was no warden of the Royal Mint at the time of

that recoinage. I don't know. Maybe if there had been, I wouldn't still have a few worthless old pound coins jangling and change cups. The job that Newton had done so admirably was actually dissolved in eighty nine. Newton lived in London and remained Master of the Mint until the year he died. Seventy seven. He had been knighted by Queen Anne back in seventeen o five, not surprisingly for his services to science or the Mint, but just because

of contemporary politics. By the way, that's why we didn't refer to him as Sir Isaac, because he wasn't one yet. He was buried at Westminster Abbey alongside kings and queens and martyrs and heroes, the great and the good. Newton's legacy as a scientist or that didn't actually exist until eighteen thirty three, by the way, has far outshined his legacy as the able administrator of the mentor even as

the bane of London's counterfeiting games. It's the scientist Newton whose statue stands well hunches really in the courtyard of the British Library, and whose portrait hangs in the Newton Corner at the Devereaux Pub with his prisons and telescope and apple. It's that Newton who appeared on the one pound note, in big curly wig atop his head, the Principia open on his lap. Currency acts as symbolic representation not only of monetary value, but also social values. It

tells a story about the people who use it. That's why we put pictures on it. Newton's portrait on the one pound note, traded for pints of beer and dishes of coffee stashed in purses and wallets dropped in the streets, further cemented his legacy as a sign tist. In two thousand seventeen, the Royal Mint commemorated Sir Isaac Newton's three d and seventy fifth birthday with, of course, a coin, and once again it was Newton the scientist, not Newton the cop or Newton the master of the mint who

was represented. Now, I know you can't fit a life on a coin, but still maybe a coin is a fitting testament to a man who not only laid the groundwork for how we understand our universe, but who also rescued English money from clippers and coiners. The coin piece, featuring a map of the solar system, was never circulated, but you can still buy it on one of those collector websites or eBay for well a lot more than fifty bents. Just make sure it's the real deal. Newton's

Law is a production of I Heart Radio. It's written and hosted by me Linda Rodriguez, mcrabbie. Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch. Our producer is Emily Marina. Our executive producer is Jason English. Original music by Alee McCoy with editing help from Mary Do, Sound design and mixing by Jeremy Thall, Research and fact checking by me and Joscelyn Sears.

Our show logo is designed by Lucy Quintanilla. Big thanks to our voice actors throughout the series, Keith Plumbing, Mark McDonald, Robert Jack Paul Tinto, Ruthie Stevens, Emma Falcons and our favorite street urchins Austin Rodriguez mcgraby and Edwin Rodriguez mcgraby. I got the Pots as always special thanks to our experts Chris Barker, Dr. Patricia farre, Tom Levinson, Joe ed Raymond and Harry Potter. Special thanks to mangest Hate Cadur,

Fineflex Sound Studios and the Modern Royal Mint. If you enjoyed Newton's Law, please leave us a rating and a comment. You might also enjoy other I Heart originals such as Black Cowboys and Operation Midnight. Climax. In our next I Heard original series will transport you to the nineties. The nineties nineties to find out what happened when the world's biggest movie star took over a small town in Idaho.

Keep an eye out for Haleywood on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. And thanks for listening.