The Mint Act of April 2, 1792 called for a cent with a design emblematic of liberty. As first written, the law asked for a coin of 264 grains of copper, which proved impractical, and the Act of January 14, 1793 cut the standard to 208 grains, or 13.48 grams. The Chain cent was the first coin struck to that new standard, and the first coin the federal government made in quantity on its own presses inside its own building.
The Mint had no engraver yet. Its chief coiner, the clockmaker Henry Voigt, cut the dies himself, and Elias Boudinot's 1795 report to Congress mentions that the coiner had to make dies while the post of engraver stood empty. Voigt's designs were necessarily simple: a Liberty head with loose, windblown hair, and on the reverse a ring of fifteen chain links, one for each state then in the Union. The chain borrowed from the Continental currency of 1776 and the Fugio cents of 1787, and Walter Breen thought the sketch probably came from Mint Director David Rittenhouse.
Coinage began in late February 1793; Breen notes a possible ceremonial striking on Washington's birthday, February 22. NGC dates the coinage of all 36,103 Chain cents to March 1 through 12. The reaction was poor. A newspaper complained that Liberty seemed to be in a fright, and many readers took the chain as a picture of slavery rather than of union. When the supply of blanks ran out in March, the Mint used the pause to prepare a new design, the Wreath cent.
The blanks were cut from scrap copper bought in late 1792, and many Chain cents show the pits and flakes that came with it. The obverse dies were engraved shallowly, so the portrait wore away fast; the chain was deeper and often outlasts everything else on a worn coin. Breen estimated that a little over 1,000 Chain cents survive.
