In 1696, Sir Isaac Newton was tapped as the Warden of the Royal Mint.  These positions were, typically, considered ceremonial government honors for those citizens who had already aspired to greatness rather that real responsibilities. But Newton saw that the country had a massive counterfeit coin problem and took actions to address it. 

You have likely noticed that many coins have either ridges or imprints on their edges.  This is to address a problem commonly referred to as “coin clipping.”  For most of history, coins were made of precious metals like gold and silver.  This meant that the metal the coins were made of had intrinsic value not just the coin.  Unscrupulous, people would shave a bit off the edge of a coin, keep the clipped-off pieces, then spend the shaved coin at face value.  The coin’s change in size and shape would hardly be noticeable and early coins tended to be a bit misshapen anyway due to the minting process. Since English coins varied so widely in size and quality, it was easy to pass off even the sloppiest knockoffs as legal tender.

If enough people did this to the same coins, the changes would eventually become obvious, but most people did not really care as they would spend the coins in a normal manner.  But at some point, the adulterated coins would be so different from their intended size and shape (remember the value is literally in the metals for the coin) that merchants would refuse to accept them.

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\\\\By 1696, England’s financial system was in full-blown crisis mode. The country’s currency consisted entirely of silver coins, and that silver was often worth more than the value stamped because the coins had been so diminished in size that there was not the requisite amount of metal in them.  Riots broke out as faith in the English currency plummeted. 

The British government called on Newton who recalled all English coins and had them melted down and remade into a higher-quality, harder-to-counterfeit design. Newton reorganized the Royal Mints into high-quality, high-efficiency factories pumping out currency that was highly resistant to forgers. Uniformity in coinage, coupled with designs that made it very apparent when the coins had been altered stopped the devaluation of British currency.

The reeded edge or ridges along the edges of the coin were part of the solution.  By adding an identifiable feature to the edges, clippers could no longer remove part of the coins subtly. Anyone receiving the clipped coin would, nearly instantly, know that it was manipulated.

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