Johann Beckmann (1739-1811), Professor of Oekonomie at the University of Göttingen, is often hailed as the founder of modern technology studies. But what can be said about Beckmann as an antiquarian? In this paper, I will discuss Beckmann’s longstanding interest in precious metals and his efforts to develop a more “scientific” approach for analyzing metal objects, especially gold and silver coins. As I will argue, this approach consisted of an amalgam of philological inquiry, visual analysis, and experimental practice, and was used by Beckmann to quantify the object(s) under investigation. He was particularly interested in finding a way to establish the ratio between pure gold or silver and the metal alloys that were used in the minting of coins. Like many antiquarians, he believed that such a ratio could be used to distinguish the authentic productions of ancient peoples like the Greeks and Romans from the many forgeries that were beginning to flood the market. What distinguished Beckmann—or did it?—was his willingness to use tools and techniques that had long been known to artisans, such as hydrostatic balances and scratch tests, when making such determinations. Indeed, one of the central theses of this paper is that while Beckmann was uniquely positioned to acquire “knowledge of the handicrafts,” due to his growing reputation as a scholar of Technologie, many late eighteenth-century antiquarians shared his interest in artisanal epistemologies. Some even wrote histories of inventions, wherein the making and measuring of coins (not surprisingly) occupied pride of place.
