The "How Ben Beat The Counterfeiters" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an article in my local newspaper that was written by David Hamilton and was titled "How Ben Beat The Counterfeiters."  The story told how one of our founding fathers, Ben Franklin, laid security groundwork in printing the US paper dollar.  If you have been reading this blog for the past eight years, you might remember that I taught Industrial Arts at Manheim Township High School with my main courses being in the Graphic Arts and Printing.  I realize that Ben was so busy as an inventor, publisher, diplomat and U.S. founding father that it's easy to lose track of his accomplishments.  Well, if you haven't heard, Ben was an early designer of paper money to try and stop the constant threat of counterfeiting.  He was an early innovator of printing techniques that used colored threads, watermarks and imprints of natural objects such as leaves to make it harder for others to create knockoffs of his paper bills.  A team at the University of Notre Dame has shed light on his methods using advanced scanning techniques that reveal some of Franklin's methods in greater detail.  His research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and describes data gathered with techniques such as spectroscopy and florescence tests which use light to identify elements such as carbon, calcium and potassium in test samples.  The reason for doing all this research was to learn about the materials that Franklin used and his network of printers and how they served to distinguish their bills from cheaper copies.  The researchers examined why Franklin used watermarks in printing bills to stop others from copying them.  Franklin also used "nature printing" which was a technique by which he transferred the detailed vein patterns of tree leaves to printing plates.  Franklin made it as hard as possible to copy his own methods when he used paper with dyed threads in his techniques.  Eventually, the Revolutionary War brought on such a surge of counterfeiting that the U.S. Government shunned paper bills for decades in favor of coinage.  It wasn't until the Civil War in 1861 that the federal government first authorized the printing of dollar bills called "greenbacks."  The features of those bills were colored threads.  These bills remain in use today, but in a more modern form.  Today's currency features "a security thread" which is a vertical band embedded in bills worth $5 and more that fluoresces under ultraviolet light.  Did you know that?  Give it a try sometime so you can see it for yourself.  Pretty neat how Ben beat the counterfeiters!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.