Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

Obverse of 1997 £2 Coin

Reverse of 1997 £2 Coin

British Bi-metallic £2 Coins, 1997 Onwards
This British coin carries the inscription:-
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
on its edge.
"The edge inscription encapsulates perfectly the essence of the reverse design, and has been taken from a letter written by Isaac Newton to fellow scientist Robert Hooke on 5th. February 1676, where he very modestly claimed that his success had been built on the achievement of others: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"".
It is possible that Benjamin Franklin said it also, but later!
According to another source we found on the web http://www.win-uk.net/~jherbert/giants.html:-
A guestbook entry from Alan Williams quotes the Oxford Dictionary (of Quotations?) as crediting Bernard of Chartes with the first usage of "on the shoulders of giants" in about 1130.
Somebody recently asked us about a £2 coin with the words of a pop song around the edge, referring to these coins. We are not sure whether Oasis took the inspiration for their song from the words of Newton or from the coin. As we told this enquirer, it's not the words of a pop song on the edge of a coin, it is the words of Newton or the coin inscription used for the title of a song. Newton uttered his comment in 1676, the edge inscription on the £2 coin was introduced in1997, and the music (?) album was released on 28th February 2000. We guess that if you were really stuck for the lyrics of your next CD, reading the inscriptions on coins may provide inspiration, or perhaps the members of Oasis are all secret coin collectors. Now if the Royal Mint ever produce coins with the edge inscription "F*ck*n' In The Bushes", they could be quite a rarity!

We hope you have found this page useful.
You may wish to visit some of our other pages:-
Information About £2 Coins
Coin Inscriptions

If you want to find the value of a coin you own, please take a look at our page I've Found An Old Coin, What's It Worth?

If you have an enquiry about any of our £2 Pieces, we'd be happy to answer you, but please note it may be quicker to telephone us. Please see the Contact Us page of our website.

Please, if you are going to ask us whether the £2 coin you own is worth more than £2, please, please, please read our other pages about them first, and even then the answer is almost certainly no. About 1,000 people every week read one or more of our pages about £2 coins. Hopefully most manage to find what they wanted. A tiny percentage, but still about 20 per week ask us whether a £2 they have found in change / in a drawer / been given is worth more than £2. The answer to 99% of these questions is already on our site. We do not have the time or patience to answer such questions individually.