Rather, they were an early type of consumer protection. In the first century BC, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio described Archimedes' discovery of hydrostatic weighing. King Hiero II of Syracuse gave Archimedes the assignment to investigate the purity of a newly commissioned golden wreath, believing silver was added to the gold content. The famous story ends with Archimedes running through the streets shouting "eureka, eureka" after he found a means to expose the deceit while he sat in a bath tub. In Europe the hallmarking of precious metal objects was, and still is, a legally required process. It involves testing and the fineness of the metal and then stamping it with control marks that show the results. Originally this was a tax “for the encouragement of tillage”, but after 1806 when Irish silver was struck with the king’s head duty mark it became the mark signifying the Dublin Assay Office. The Hibernia mark was only introduced in 1730, and the monarch’s head mark came in in 1806, so we do not expect to see either.
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