Benjamin Franklin launched America’s fight against counterfeit money with colored threads, watermarks and images of leaves, new study shows

    Financial Collateral > Banking News > Industry News > Benjamin Franklin launched America’s fight against counterfeit money with colored threads, watermarks and images of leaves, new study shows
August 16, 2023
Aya Jootar
Industry News
0

Benjamin Franklin was so busy as an inventor, publisher, scientist, diplomat and U.S. founding father that it’s easy to lose track of his accomplishments.

So add one more to the roster: his early work in printing colonial paper currency designed to counter a constant threat of counterfeiting.

Franklin was an early innovator of printing techniques that used colored threads, watermarks and imprints of natural objects such as leaves to make it far harder for others to create knockoffs of his paper bills. A team at the University of Notre Dame has shed new light on his methods using advanced scanning techniques that reveal some of Franklin’s methods in greater detail — along the way, also providing one more reason Franklin appears on the $100 bill.

The new research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes data gathered with techniques such as spectroscopy and fluorescence tests, which use light to identify elements such as carbon, calcium and potassium in test samples. Researchers also used electron microscopes for imaging fine details.

Source: Fortune

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