The Latin Monetary Union of France, Switzerland and their partners used the 20-franc gold piece as its standard coin. John A. Kasson, who had once chaired the House coinage committee and was then the American minister to Austria-Hungary, proposed in 1879 that the United States strike a gold coin close enough to it in weight to pass alongside it. The result was a four dollar piece with its metal content stated in grams.
The match was never exact. The Stella weighed 7 grams to the 20-franc coin's 6.45, held 6 grams of gold against 5.81, and was made .857 fine rather than .900. Exchange rates moved in any case, and Congress declined to adopt the coin. Some researchers, among them Mark Borckardt, doubt that the Mint ever made planchets in the stated gold, silver and copper alloy, and suggest it cut down ordinary half eagle blanks instead.
Two obverses were made, one by Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber and one by assistant engraver George T. Morgan, with a reverse by Barber, and both were struck in 1879 and 1880. The Mint struck the first 40 sets of these patterns on a medal press in January 1880, and members of Congress asked for 100 more sets that March. Several hundred more 1879 Flowing Hair coins followed and were sold to congressmen at cost, and some of them were later seen worn as jewelry around Washington. The Coiled Hair coins and the 1880 Flowing Hair were made in far smaller numbers and were not widely known to collectors until Edgar H. Adams wrote about them early in the 20th century.
The Mint also struck the designs in copper, aluminum and white metal, which are listed with the 1879 and 1880 four dollar patterns, and in 1879 it made five $20 pieces on the same metric plan, the quintuple stellas.
