Spring Break
Great Seal analyzed at URI laboratory
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 10/30/07 Section: News
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10/30/07 - A team of scientists and news correspondents crowded into a small laboratory last Friday morning to analyze a rare silver-coated artifact that could be a double of one of the Great Seals of the United States.
However, the tests proved to be inconclusive, as the only basis for comparison is at Mt. Vernon in Virginia.
Portsmouth antiques dealer and amateur historian John Pierce bought the seal at a yard sale. He found the die, or stamp, at a Tiverton estate sale last March and if authentic, the seal would be a prototype of the first seal of the president, which was owned by George Washington.
"We were driving through the forest in the Tiverton area and there was a yard sale sign so we pulled up," said Pierce. "There was a box with a few other silver plates and I saw this disc come out [of the box] and I just grabbed it. The guy said 'I don't know what that is, but it's five bucks.'"
When Pierce examined the die further, he realized that it was in fact the Seal of the United States and not a coin as he originally thought. He found it strange because no other seal he could think of had an eagle with a bundle of arrows in the right talon.
"I saw this and thought 'oh this is wrong, it's just a paper-weight and not an original die,' until I ran across this reference of a very obscure book called "The Eagle and the Shield,'" he said.
Pierce said it was at the very last chapter that he found an artist's rendering of the very presidential die he had. The illustration was of the Dorrsett Die, named after the family that held onto and protected it for more than a century. It is now believed to have been a gift to Washington during his presidency sometime around 1789, but was sold to one of Washington's cousins for $6, ironically enough.
Dennis Hilliard, the director of the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory, electrical materials engineer Michael Platek and URI engineering professor Otto Gregory administered the analysis of the die. They used a $250,000 electron microscope, which uses X-rays to see inside the die and determine the components of its core at 100,000 times magnification.
However, the tests proved to be inconclusive, as the only basis for comparison is at Mt. Vernon in Virginia.
Portsmouth antiques dealer and amateur historian John Pierce bought the seal at a yard sale. He found the die, or stamp, at a Tiverton estate sale last March and if authentic, the seal would be a prototype of the first seal of the president, which was owned by George Washington.
"We were driving through the forest in the Tiverton area and there was a yard sale sign so we pulled up," said Pierce. "There was a box with a few other silver plates and I saw this disc come out [of the box] and I just grabbed it. The guy said 'I don't know what that is, but it's five bucks.'"
When Pierce examined the die further, he realized that it was in fact the Seal of the United States and not a coin as he originally thought. He found it strange because no other seal he could think of had an eagle with a bundle of arrows in the right talon.
"I saw this and thought 'oh this is wrong, it's just a paper-weight and not an original die,' until I ran across this reference of a very obscure book called "The Eagle and the Shield,'" he said.
Pierce said it was at the very last chapter that he found an artist's rendering of the very presidential die he had. The illustration was of the Dorrsett Die, named after the family that held onto and protected it for more than a century. It is now believed to have been a gift to Washington during his presidency sometime around 1789, but was sold to one of Washington's cousins for $6, ironically enough.
Dennis Hilliard, the director of the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory, electrical materials engineer Michael Platek and URI engineering professor Otto Gregory administered the analysis of the die. They used a $250,000 electron microscope, which uses X-rays to see inside the die and determine the components of its core at 100,000 times magnification.
