Off topic : NYT -- New Design Coming for (U.S.) Paper Currency.
December 1, 2002
New Design Coming for Paper Currency
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:01 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The last time Andrew Jackson got a
makeover, he ended up with a big head, slightly off-center.
This time, he will get a little color.
The most noticeable features of the last redesign of U.S.
currency -- the oversized, off-center portraits -- produced
all kinds of derisive nicknames: funny money, Monopoly
money, cartoon money.
Color is coming, and government money makers are hoping for
a warmer reception for the changes. The new $20, with its
public unveiling set for the spring, is supposed to be in
circulation as early as next fall.
Jackson is first in line for a makeover. After the new $20
makes its debut, the new $50 (Ulysses S. Grant) and the
$100s (Benjamin Franklin) will follow in within 18 months.
In the works is a five-year effort, costing up to $53
million, to educate people about the changes. An important
goal is to help distinguish between genuine greenbacks and
bogus bills.
``If we learned anything from the issuance of the $20 in
1998, it is that things that we get used to here, because
we see it and work on it, when it is first in the hands of
the public it is seen as dramatic,'' said Thomas Ferguson,
director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
``Suddenly, we are asking them to accept something else.''
Portrait engraver Thomas Hipschen, who is working on the
current redesign, remembers spending countless hours during
the last makeover meticulously cutting into steel by hand
the portraits of Jackson, Franklin and Grant for the new
bills.
Relieved at first when the work was done, he then worried
about the public reaction to the changes.
``You worry about what the press is going to do,'' he said.
``I have an old clipping file about all the horrible things
they said about the portraits that I engraved. Some fun
things, too. ``
Everyone is a critic.
``Well, you are not going to please everybody. This is a
situation where everybody is going to weigh in on it,''
Hipschen said. ``You really have to have a thick skin, I
think. But I don't really take it to heart that much. When
my artist friends come back and say, `What were you
thinking?' -- that kind of hurts to the quick. But the
general population, they are going to get on the bandwagon,
one way or the other, and I'm just going to have to live
with it.''
To give the new bills color, the bureau has had to buy five
printing presses, to operate in Washington and at a bureau
facility in Fort Worth, Texas. To run the new presses,
Ferguson said, some existing workers are getting trained,
and a few new people have been hired. The Fort Worth plant
is being expanded, providing room for the new presses and
space for public tours, he said.
Adding color to the notes is a challenge.
``It is new,
and anything that is new provides another opportunity to do
well -- or not,'' Ferguson said. ``There can be color
variations that we wouldn't get with a single color ink,
like when we use black or green. So there are additional
inspection requirements.''
Green and black ink is now used on neutral-colored paper.
With the makeover, color tints will be added in the neutral
areas of the note. Ferguson would not say which colors will
be used, but said they will vary by denomination.
Money makers want the new notes to have an American look
and feel, and not be confused with, for instance, the
colorful euro, the paper currency of the European Union.
``When we look at something as fundamentally revolutionary
as adding color, going from a currency system that has been
monochromatic certainly for all of our lives, our parents'
lives, ... we want to do it in a responsible way that
recognizes that tradition,'' Ferguson said. ``So that when
people around the world see that first new U.S. $20, they
will know it as a U.S. $20.''
Recent changes in paper money design have been driven by
the desire to thwart high-tech counterfeiters. Over the
years, counterfeiters have graduated from offset printing
to increasingly sophisticated color copiers, computer
scanners, color ink jet printers and publishing-grade
software, all readily available.
Some anti-counterfeiting features included in the last
redesign will be retained, the bureau said. They include
watermarks that are visible when held up to a light;
embedded security threads that glow a color when exposed to
an ultraviolet light; and minute images, visible with a
magnifying glass, known as microprinting.
The new notes may sport more distinct color-shifting ink.
In the last redesign, color-shifting ink that looks green
when viewed straight on but black at an angle was used in a
spot on some notes.
Even after the greenbacks' last makeover, which started
with a revamped Franklin on the $100 in 1996 and ended with
new $5s and $10s in 2000, some collectors still complained
that U.S. currency is boring.
Ferguson has a different take.
``Our notes now, in the
highest sense of the word, are utilitarian,'' he said.
``U.S. currency is a continuum of design, versus a
revolution of design.''
Under the redesign, the size of the notes will not change
and the same faces will appear on the same bills. But the
portraits and buildings may be presented differently.
Hipschen said if he were king for a day, he would put Duke
Ellington on one of the bills, would replace all the
portraits with different American figures and would make
notes longer as they increase in denomination.
``We could have gone where no man had gone before,'' he
joked.
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On the Net: Bureau of Engraving and Printing:
bep.treas.gov
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
