Identifier: storyofexpositio04todd (find matches)
Title: The story of the exposition; being the official history of the international celebration held at San Francisco in 1915 to commemorate the discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the construction of the Panama Canal
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Todd, Frank Morton Panama-Pacific International Exposition Company
Subjects: Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
Publisher: New York, London : Pub. for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Company by G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: San Francisco Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: San Francisco Public Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
llar and tried to deposit it fora half dollar. But the cashier said: What are you trying on us, Farran? Youre fifty cents short. Andyouve got a piece of French money here. Thats no good in this country. Farran Zerbe was a numismatist, but he didnt know it yet—wouldnthave known the difference between a numismatist and a counterfeiter.That was the first time it had come to his attention that there were morekinds of money than Uncle Sam made, and he was a bit incredulous. Ifthere had been any other kinds, of importance, people would have knownabout them and they would have circulated on the streets of Tyrone, Pa.;but he had never heard of any. Yet there was his troublesome dime, marked 50 cent. when it wasnt. He had an itching curiosity to know how it hadcome about. He began to ask questions. The cashier was glad to answer them. ThenZerbe began to read everything he could get hold of about coins and medalsand the strange things people had used in primitive stages of civilization as 114
Text Appearing After Image:
wo HW > a «o THE COIN OUTLASTS THE THRONE 115 media of exchange. He got acquainted with those people, ancient andmodern. Being a numismatist involved a great deal he had never contem-plated. It was worse, really, than being a philatelist. It led him intostrange fields. He could never read Old Sleuth like the other boys; he wassleuthing through a translated Hesiod, trying to find out what the ancientGreeks used for money, and why they did. Being a numismatist he became a geographer, an anthropologist, anarchaeologist, an historian, an economist, a student of governments, andpolitical systems,and religions, and mythology, and symbolism,and heraldry,and art. He collected coins, currency, medals. He corresponded withscholars, and societies of scholars. He became President of the AmericanNumismatic Association, a member of the United States Assay Commission,publisher of the Numismatist. For Farran Zerbe, that 50-centime piece was the gateway into a broadand liberal intellectual life, a

Note About Images