They're rubberstamping these days at City Hall, but not in pejorative sense.
Instead, the city clerk's office is laying in a supply of self-inking rubber stamps as a concession to 20th century technology. They're cheaper and more legible than the 19th century embossers the clerk's office uses to impress the city seal into Important Documents.
That's a tradition that dates to medieval Britain, when seals were used to verify the authenticity of documents for a largely illiterate population, according to City Clerk Casey Carl, who walked Mpls through the lore of seals with Records Manager Craig Steiner.
The city's supply of embossers -- the lever-action presses that apply the pressure to imprint the seal into papers – grew thin when a handle broke on one of its antique embossers. A new one cost about $500, so the city also laid in a supply of stampers at $25.98 apiece for everyday use.
Attorneys wanting certified copies supply much of the demand for embossed copies, along with ceremonial documents to which a gold-colored circle of foil is applied. The embossers are equipped with upper and lower dies, but they wear out periodically and need to be replaced with freshly-cut dies costing about $45 per set. The old dies are destroyed.
The cast-iron embossers are heavy-duty tools, requiring a strong arm to imprint a seal properly. According to the antique Toledo scale in the city's licensing office, the two embossers weight in at 17 and 18 pounds respectively.
The city adopted the seal in 1878, and contains various symbols of the city's riverfront and its chief industries at that time. It contains the motto "en avant" or forward, a nod to the influence of French Canadian on the city in its earliest days.
