The Great Seal of the United States, 1782
The device adopted by the Congress of the United States on 20 June 1782, on the report of Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress. It is one of the few emblems anywhere whose explanation was adopted as law along with the picture: Thomson's Remarks and Explanation reads the escutcheon, the eagle, the olive branch and arrows, the constellation, the pyramid and the eye in turn, and says what each is for. The plates here are the Department of State's own colour renderings from its history of the seal, Washington 1909. The obverse was cut in brass in 1782 and has been in use since; no die of the reverse has ever been cut.
