COIN UPDATE
CHARLES BABBAGE 50P RELEASED
The Royal Mint have revealed the design of a new 50p which celebrates the life and legacy of scientist Charles Babbage, 150 years after his death.
The new coin is part of The Royal Mint’s ‘Innovation in Science’ series, which pays tribute to some of Britain’s greatest minds, and follows similar 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 coin honours Babbage’s legacy with a design that links his machinery to the digital age. 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
