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According to the official United States Mint FAQ, ridged or "reeded" edges served two purposes. Reeded edges not only made the coins harder to counterfeit, they also prevented people from filing down or "clipping" the coins. Back in 1793, the first U.S. coins were linked to a silver standard. A half dollar contained half as much silver as a silver dollar, a quarter contained one-fourth, and so on. The ridged edges prevented nogoodniks from skimming the coins¿ edges for extra silver. Introduced later, negligible nickels and paltry pennies weren't made of silver, and thus their edges escaped unscathed. While coins these days aren't made of
precious metals, the government decided to keep the reeded edges on certain coins to help the visually impaired. The dime and the penny, for example, are roughly the same size, so the ridges help people distinguish them. We could tell you why the government doesn¿t adopt a similar policy toward paper money, except that, well, we don¿t know why.
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