or intellectual attainments. Such qualifications were not required of later public appointees, who included such prominent figures as Ellin Berlin, wife of songwriter Irving Berlin. The first women to be appointed to the Assay Commission were Mrs. Kellogg Fairbanks of Chicago and Mrs. B.B. Munford of Richmond, Virginia, both in 1920. The recordholder for service as a commissioner is Herbert Gray Torrey, 36 times an assay commissioner between 1874 and 1910 (missing only 1879) by virtue of his office as assayer of the New York Assay Office. The recordholder as a presidential appointee is Dr. James Lewis Howe, head of the Department of Chemistry at Washington and Lee University, 18 times an assay commissioner, serving in 1907 and then each year from 1910 to 1926. An employee of the National Bureau of Standards was included in the presidential appointments each year; he brought with him the weights used in the assay, which were checked by the agency in advance. Although no future president served as an assay commissioner, Comptroller of the Currency Charles G. Dawes was a commissioner in 1899 and 1900; he was Vice President of the United States from 1925 to 1929. Among those appointed was coin collector and Congressman William A. Ashbrook, 14 times an assay commissioner between 1908 and 1934. Ashbrook's presence on the 1934 Assay Commission has led to speculation that he might have used his position as an assay commissioner (he left Congress in 1921) to secure one or more 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagles, almost all of which were melted due to the end of gold coinage for circulation. Assay commissioners were traditionally allowed to purchase coins from the pyx that were not assayed, and numismatic historian Roger Burdette speculates that Ashbrook, generally well-treated by the Treasury Department due to his onetime congressional position, might have exchanged other gold pieces for the 1933 coins. The three known specimens of the 1873-CC quarter, without arrows by the date, and the only known dime of that description, may have been salvaged from assay pieces, as the remainder of those coins had been ordered melted as underweight. A similar mystery attends the 1894 Barber dime struck at San Francisco (1894-S) of which the published mintage is 24, although it is not certain whether this total includes the one sent to Philadelphia to await the 1895 Assay Commission. The fact that one of the 1895 assay commissioners was