• The Royal Mint honours the life and legacy of Charles Babbage for the first time on UK coin
• The commemorative 50p marks the 150^th anniversary of the inventor’s death
• The Charles Babbage 50p is the fourth coin in The Royal Mint’s Innovation in Science collectable series, available at The Royal Mint.

The Royal Mint, the Original Maker of UK coins, is celebrating the life and legacy of Charles Babbage with a commemorative 50p coin, released to mark the 150th anniversary of his death.

As part of The Royal Mint’s ‘Innovation in Science’ series, which pays tribute to some of Britain’s greatest minds, the Charles Babbage 50p follows collectable coins in honour of John Logie Baird, Rosalind Franklin and Stephen Hawking.  

An influential scientist, Charles Babbage was a lifelong inventor who believed that scientifi­c advancement should bene­fit everyone. He was best known for his mechanical calculator, or ‘Difference Engine,’ and conceived the Analytical Engine, that had many essential features found in modern digital computers.

Designed by Nigel Tudman and Jas Bhamra, the latest collectable coin honours Babbage’s legacy with a design that links his machinery to the digital age on the canvas of a 50p piece. The making of the Charles Babbage coin, available in brilliant uncirculated, gold, silver piedfort and silver, combines traditional minting skills and modern technology.  

Clare Maclennan, The Royal Mint’s Divisional Director of Commemorative Coin, said: “Known as the Father of the Computer, Charles Babbage’s inventions have influenced the way we all work and play today, and there is possibly no greater example of the importance of his legacy than in recent times with the reliance of digital media during the pandemic.”   

She added: “The collectable Charles Babbage 50p is the latest tribute to some of Britain’s greatest scientific inventors on official UK coin. Our Innovation in Science series has proved extremely popular with coin collectors and we are delighted to add Charles Babbage to the collection, marking 150 years since his death.” 

Speaking of the coin design, London-based graphic designer Nigel Tudman said: “The Charles Babbage coin brief has been my favourite so far as it involved expressing the development of an idea; taking a complex subject and stripping it back to the essentials to create an attractive yet simple design that contains a subtle message or brain teaser.

“Our aim was to achieve a timeless design created in low relief on the canvas of a 50p which celebrated Babbage the inventor and took inspiration from his Difference Engines. Using a geometric modernist typeface and suggesting the horizontal and vertical bars and numbers from the original machine, the design reflects the movement and flow of the calculations in motion, adding the extra twist of encoding Babbage’s name.”

The coin is available to purchase from today in a range of precious metals and brilliant uncirculated at The Royal Mint website. 

 

 

Coin title	Charles Babbage 2021 UK 50p Gold Proof coin	Charles Babbage 2021 UK 50p Silver Proof Piedfort coin	Charles Babbage 2021 UK 50p Silver Proof coin	Charles Babbage 2021 UK 50p Brilliant Uncirculated coin
Denomination	50p	50p	50p	50p
Issuing Authority	UK	UK	UK	UK
Alloy	916.7 Au	925 Ag	925 Ag	Cupro-Nickel
Weight	15.50g	16.00g	8.00g	8.00g
Diameter	27.30mm	27.30mm	27.30mm	27.30mm
Obverse Designer	Jody Clark	Jody Clark	Jody Clark	Jody Clark
Reverse Designer	Nigel Tudman and Jas Bhamra	Nigel Tudman and Jas Bhamra	Nigel Tudman and Jas Bhamra	Nigel Tudman and Jas Bhamra
Quality	Proof	Proof	Proof	Brilliant Uncirculated
Maximum Coin Mintage	260	1510	4000	Unlimited
RRP	£1,065.00	£102.50	£57.50	£10.00

 

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The Royal Mint has an unbroken history of minting British coinage dating back over 1,100 years. Based in the Tower of London for over 500 years, by 1812 The Royal Mint had moved out of the Tower to premises on London’s Tower Hill. In 1967 the building of a new Royal Mint began on its current site in South Wales, UK, to accommodate the minting of UK decimal coinage.

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