FSF, March 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  There are other ways to distinguish currency paper from regular paper. Under an ultraviolet or “black light” lamp, ordinary paper will fluoresce or glow as the bleaching agents in the paper absorb the ultraviolet light and reemit visible light. But currency paper won't glow, since no bleaching agents are used in its production. Paul often carries a tiny ultraviolet LED mini torch, which has an ultraviolet light emitting diode and can be used detecting counterfeit currency (among other things).

  Of course, genuine currency that has gone through the washer in the pocket of your jeans will glow under ultraviolet light if your laundry detergent contains whiteners. And genuine paper is no guarantee of a genuine bill. Think for a moment and we bet you can come up with a readily available source of genuine currency paper.

  That's right: a great source of currency paper is currency itself. Counterfeiters have been known to bleach a batch of dollar bills and print hundred-dollar bills on the paper. That's a very nice profit margin!

  Now, run your finger over the surface of a bill. Can you feel the raised lines of ink? U.S. currency is printed on an intaglio press, which uses an engraved steel plate. The process leaves mounds of ink on the paper that you can feel. Because that ink is ferromagnetic, a strong magnet, such as a rare earth or neodymium magnet, will attract a dollar bill, a characteristic that helps both vending machines and the automatic sorting machines at Federal Reserve banks detect counterfeits.

  Take a look at the elaborate scrolls and flourishes that decorate the borders of each bill. Those are also anti-counterfeiting measures. Because of the printing methods used, every curlicue and detail has crisp lines. When U.S. currency was first designed, only a skilled printer could make a convincing duplicate of a hundred-dollar bill. The printing precision required by the design was difficult for counterfeiters to duplicate—until relatively recently.

  Desktop Counterfeiting

  From 1939 to 1990, there weren't any big changes in the overall look of U.S. currency. Oh, there were some modifications: experiments with the composition of the paper in the forties, the addition of “In God We Trust” in 1957, the shift from Silver Certificates to Federal Reserve Notes. But the overall look and feel of the bills remained fairly static. Some other countries changed their money designs regularly, but not the United States.

  In the early 1990s, that changed. Why? Because the tools available to would-be counterfeiters had improved dramatically with the development of the color copier and color printer.

  In 1991, government agents recovered between six and eight million dollars’ worth of counterfeit currency that had been produced using color copiers and printers. At that time, desktop counterfeiting was a growing industry, doubling each year. Design changes that the Treasury Department began introducing in the 1990s were intended to thwart these casual counterfeiters.

  If you have a five or a ten or a twenty among the bills in your wallet, take a look at the series number on the bills. This number is just to the right of the portrait on the bill and it indicates the date of the design for this particular bill (not the date the bill was printed).

  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, one-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar bills generally wear out in around a year and a half. Twenty-dollar bills, which aren't handled as much, may last for two years. A fifty may be around for as long as five years and a hundred-dollar bill has an average life span of eight and a half years. So the odds are good that you'll find some bills of relatively recent vintage in your wallet.

  If the bill you're examining is worth five dollars or more, look the dead president in the eye and hold the bill up to the light. Examine the blank area just to the left of the Federal Reserve seal. Unless you have a genuine antique on your hands, you'll see a clear polyester thread running vertically through the paper. The thread is printed with words that identify the bill's denomination: the twenty will have the words U.S.A. TWENTY, for example. A photocopy of the bill would lack this thread. This thread was among the first anti-counterfeiting measures included in the new currency designs.

  If you have a magnifying glass, you may be able to spot another anti-counterfeiting measure: a line of microprinting that runs around the rim of the central portrait says THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Back when this microprinting was added to bills, it was so small that it couldn't be reproduced with a photocopier or scanner. Those days are long past, but the microprinting remains. The microprinting and the security thread are included on all bills worth five dollars or more dating from after 1993.

  Hold the bill up to the light again. Depending on the vintage of the bill, you may see a watermark, a translucent pattern created when the paper was made. Depending on the bill's denomination and age, you may see a few other anti-counterfeiting measures. The latest version of the ten-dollar bill (introduced in 2006), the twenty-dollar bill (introduced in 2003), and the fifty-dollar bill (introduced in 2004) all include numbers in color-changing ink, which looks copper colored from one angle and green from another.

  One of the changes that sounds dramatic (but isn't) was the introduction of background colors other than green. The twenty-dollar bill, for example, includes peach, blue, and light green. The new fifty has background colors of blue and red and images of a waving American flag and a small metallic silver-blue star. The new ten has background colors of orange, yellow, and red. The Treasury Department's website at www.moneyfactory.gov goes on and on (and on and on) about these additional colors, but frankly, they are fairly easy to overlook.

  All these security features—which can't be duplicated with a color copier or printer—have succeeded in slowing desktop counterfeiting. Something else that helped was a change in copier and printer technology: many copies and scanners and photo editing programs include currency detection features. When we tried to photocopy a twenty-dollar bill at one hundred percent (in the interest of science, of course), we got an error message. Apparently some color laser printers and copiers now encode their serial number and manufacturing code in a set of tiny yellow dots on every copy they make. We've read that these dots are visible if magnified under blue light. We looked but couldn't find any sign of these dots. The theory is that the Treasury Department can use these hidden markings to track phony money back to its source. (There are, of course, privacy issues to examine here, but that's another column.)

  The More Things Change...

  Back in 1996, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing announced that they would be introducing new designs every seven to ten years to stay ahead of currency counterfeiters—and they've been true to their word. The most recent new design is the five-dollar bill, which is scheduled to begin circulating in 2008. It includes a large, borderless portrait of Lincoln, a very large purple numeral 5 on the back, and background colors of purple, red, and pink.

  The watermark on the earlier redesign of the five was a portrait of Lincoln. In the new bill, the watermark is a numeral 5. That change is a direct response to counterfeiting: the older five could be bleached and reprinted as a one hundred-dollar bill. By changing the watermark and the position of the security thread, the designers of the new bill want to make this form of counterfeiting more difficult.

  But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Counterfeiting was an international industry back before the American Revolution—and it's an international industry today. In recent years, counterfeiting operations have been traced to Columbia, Eastern Europe, and North Korea. In Korea, a government-funded operation is alleged to produce “supernotes,” almost perfect counterfeit hundreds printed on an intaglio press on paper that is identical to the official currency paper.

  But counterfeits that are far less convincing than the supernotes are passed every day to people who just aren't paying attention. We think the best anti-counterfeiting measure of all is a low-tech technique that we constantly apply at the Exploratorium: take another look. Keep an eye out for the features described here. If you want to spend a little more time examining (and experimenting with) money
, check out the chapter on money in Exploratopia, the Exploratorium's recent book on ways to explore everything in your world.

  Promises, Promises

  Money serves a variety of functions, according to economists and anthropologists. Money serves as a medium of exchange—that is, we can use it to buy stuff. It serves as a standard of value—a way of comparing the value of different things. I can buy two apples for a dollar and only one organic pluot, so money lets me compare apples and pluots. Money also acts as a store of value—a means of accumulating wealth.

  Pat just can't write about money without mentioning her favorite form of money, which is used on the Micronesian island of Yap. On Yap, stone disks that measure up to twelve feet in diameter serve as a form of money. Quarried on an island that's 250 miles away and transported to Yap by boat, the ownership of these stones brings prestige to the owner. Basically, having a sizeable stone makes you wealthy.

  Before you start snickering about the odd ways of the folks on Yap, think hard about those pieces of paper from your wallet. The use of paper money didn't catch on until the 1700s when goldsmiths started issuing people bills of receipt for gold they had on deposit. Those bills could be turned in and the gold delivered upon demand. People could then transfer the bills from one to another while the gold remained in the vault.

  Until 1971, with a few exceptions, paper money was backed by precious metal on deposit. In 1971 the U.S. government stopped promising that it would back the value of the currency it printed with the gold on deposit at Fort Knox. Money—whatever its form—is only valuable because we say it is. That's true whether the money is big stone disks or pictures of dead presidents.

  The money we use is backed by nothing more (or less) than our collective belief in it. Basically, the value of our currency is based on our faith in its value. Now that's science fiction!

  * * * *

  The Exploratorium is San Francisco's museum of science, art, and human perception—where science and science fiction meet. Paul Doherty works there. Pat Murphy used to work there, but now she works at Klutz Press (www.klutz.com), a publisher of how-to books for kids. Pat's latest novel is The Wild Girls. To learn more about Pat Murphy's writing, visit her web site at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy. For more on Paul Doherty's work and his latest adventures, visit www.exo.net/~pauld.

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  A Ten-Pound Sack of Rice by Richard Mueller

  Rich Mueller wrote this story after writing and producing an episode of Dogfights for the History Channel. The episode dealt with F4F Wildcat pilots and the Battle of Guadalcanal. Researching the story renewed his appreciation of World War II vets and those folks who are said to belong to “the Greatest Generation."

  Nathan Roullon knew that his day was coming. He had just turned eighty-eight and they had all made a fuss, as they did every year, giving him cake and ice cream and other things he could not eat. And there was whiskey, which he drank anyway. No sense in living so long that he could only exist on air and religion.

  He did not know the day that would be his day, but he was certain it would be between his eighty-eighth birthday and his eighty-ninth, and sooner rather than later. He knew, because something else was coming, something that was not coming just at him.

  He had seen the billboards, the advertisements, even heard the radio pitchmen and preachers, though it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell them apart. It was all the same thing, whether for movies or car sales or salvation; it was all about money.

  Nathan yawned and rocked and watched the sunset from his porch; reds, oranges and pinks, herons and pelicans, and a sad ship's whistle from the Commercial Channel. A warm breeze ruffled the cattails, and somewhere distant a dog barked on and on. But 666 was coming.

  June 6, 2006, had come and gone, a minor news item and a subject for jokes. Nothing had happened except the usual small horrors of man's conditional love for his fellow man, and calculated indifference to his world. Nothing would. The day of Revelation was not figured on the same calendar used to sell Firestone Tires or fish from Boudreaux's. It was coming and Nathan knew the signs. He would have some warning as to when, though he could not begin to know why, or how, or even how much. He could just see the beginning of the end, like an ink line at the borders of his vision, or a shadow on the horizon. There would be visitations and signs, and then it would happen.

  It was a bitter tickle to Nathan to know that all the religions had got it wrong. That true good and evil was more basic, more fundamental than religion, like a subterranean river whose elements had neither names nor qualities. That it would all happen without God, and the preachers would never know—though at the end they would believe in their own holiness and congratulate themselves, never understanding that it was all foolishness.

  Nathan stretched his old bones. His cat, Murphy, walked past his chair and down the steps of the front porch, sniffing the air and yawning. He gave an experimental swipe at a passing fly, then subsided, considering but not grooming his whiskers.

  Nathan could no longer remember all the cats he'd had: at least forty since he'd returned from the Pacific. They'd come to him in their ones and twos, boy cats and girl cats, some old, some as kittens, and some with kittens. The one before Murphy had been Bettina, the one before Bettina, Jake. Or Jack. They were like travelers passing through Roullon Station on their way to wherever cats went. But he fed them, and they were a comfort.

  Nathan smiled. “You a good cat, you.” If Murphy heard him, he gave no sign. He was watching a car turn down the gravel road that led from the delta road to his house, and Murphy did not like company. He didn't like anyone but Nathan. Murphy stretched up briefly like a prairie dog, then trotted off behind the little house. He would not reappear until Nathan was again alone.

  The car was his nephew's beat-up red Chevy. Joshua brought his groceries and mail, told him about happenings, gossip, and generally took care of Nathan's business affairs. Nathan had flown off carriers in World War II. Joshua had been a mud Marine in Vietnam. It turned out to be the social glue that kept Nathan connected to the rest of the family. Most of them had let crusty, opinionated old Nathan drift away, but not Joshua, who once told Nathan he too could see his own last days coming. Most of the family chased after money or things. Joshua's vice was religion, but Nathan tolerated it so that he could get his mail and groceries; theirs was an easy truce among outcasts.

  "Evening, Nathan."

  "Josh'wa."

  "Let me put this stuff away and I'll set a spell. If that's all right with you. You want a beer?"

  "Yassuh."

  Joshua took the cardboard box and bag into the kitchen where Nathan could hear him loading the refrigerator. When he came out he handed Nathan a Lone Star and sat down on the steps. Nathan could smell the sweet, acid tang coming from the bottle. He sipped it almost delicately. It would bite him later, but he savored the taste now; the meaning of life, a full bottle of suds. Beer, and a ten-pound sack of rice.

  Joshua took a long pull, then set his bottle down between his knees. “That's so good."

  "Mmmm-huh.” Nathan smiled. “Not a sin that, to consume the alcohol then?"

  "That which is not a sin entire, is not a sin in moderation,” Joshua said, quoting some preacher he'd read or heard.

  "Amen,” said Nathan, smiling. The Last Day. When it came it would take the good and the bad, and the gentle, well-meaning ones like Joshua. It didn't seem fair, but then, what did? He remembered the young gunner's face as his bullets bit into him, saw his body slump down in the cockpit, his arm crooked over the edge, his machine gun pointing skyward.

  "You okay there, Uncle Nathan?"

  "Yah."

  "You back in the war?"

  "Yah."

  Nathan had told his nephew of his combat experiences, about flying off carriers, about Guadalcanal and the Cactus Air Force, of Wildcats and Hellcats and Zeroes, and being shot down. He'd even told him about the ten-pound sack of rice—just not about the gunner.


  Joshua had grown up at the end of the Old South. He'd gone to Nam and fought and bled and smoked dope with the black guys, humped the yellow girls, and come back to help build the New South. Some of Nathan's generation had also learned this lesson, though not enough, and none quite as well as Nathan Roullon.

  He and his stubby little F4F-4 Wildcat—Number 66—had tangled with a long string of Japanese aircraft; Zeroes, “Val” dive bombers, “Kate” torpedo bombers, and a sprinkling of float-plane fighters. On that last day he'd shot down five bandits in ten minutes—and then that last torpedo plane, with the gunner....

  Roullon saw those tracers arcing toward his Wildcat, watched the canopy shatter, felt them hitting the body of Number 66. He glanced at his watch, an irresistible urge to know the moment of his death, just as a 7.7mm bullet clipped it off his wrist.

  The gunner had not been much older than sixteen, a kid, or at least that's how he looked: a scared, undernourished Jap kid with a machine gun, but he was good. Lieutenant Junior Grade Nathan Roullon had been firing at the kid all this time, and just as he ran out of ammunition the last few .50 caliber bullets hit the gunner, walking up his body, and killed him. The boy looked at Nathan with the terrible realization of everything he had lost, the moment of the end of his life, and then died.

  But the last shots the boy had taken had stopped Nathan's engine, the prop stuck up like a middle finger. Number 66, her momentum gone, began to fall toward the sea. Nathan struggled to get the canopy open and tumbled out, playing dead in his chute until he plunged into the cool, blue waters of The Slot.

  He'd made it to the beach on Kolombangara where native tribesmen, who had long mistrusted the white man but who had quickly come to hate the Japanese, took him as a trophy. Finally, they bartered him to an Australian coastwatcher for a ten-pound sack of rice.