Franklin Peale Peale designed a new machine to cut planchets, or blanks, from metal strips. This machine remained in use, almost unmodified, until 1902. Another of the steam-powered machines Peale had installed on his return was a milling machine, which was used to "upset" the coin—to form a rim around it. A Contamin portrait lathe was imported from France and installed at the Philadelphia Mint in 1837. Prior to this time, all coin dies for American coins had to be made individually, by hand at Philadelphia. Once the lathe was installed, they could be reproduced mechanically by the pantograph-like device. The first
Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano Carl Nielsen's Fantasy Pieces for Oboe and Piano ("Fantasistykker for obo og klavier"), Opus 2, were composed shortly after the composer had taken up the post of second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra in 1889. The two pieces which make up the opus were first performed at the Royal Orchestra Soirée in Copenhagen on 16 March 1891. The oboist was Olivo Krause (to whom they are dedicated) and the pianist Victor Bendix. In her list of Nielsen's compositions, Emilie Demant Hatt notes that the first fantasy piece, "Andante" (later "Romance") was completed on