Posted on 07/23/2023 7:42:29 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
During his career, Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies...
However, one major problem stood in the way of efforts to print paper money: counterfeiting. When Franklin opened his printing house in 1728, paper money was a relatively new concept. Unlike gold and silver, paper money's lack of intrinsic value meant it was constantly at risk of depreciating. There were no standardized bills in the Colonial period, leaving an opportunity for counterfeiters to pass off fake bills as real ones. In response, Franklin worked to embed a suite of security features that made his bills distinctive...
One of the most distinctive features they found was in Franklin's pigments. Manukyan and his team determined the chemical elements used for each item in Notre Dame's collection of Colonial notes. The counterfeits, they found, have distinctive high quantities of calcium and phosphorus, but these elements are found only in traces in the genuine bills.
Their analyses revealed that although Franklin used (and sold) "lamp black," a pigment created by burning vegetable oils, for most printing, Franklin's printed currency used a special black dye made from graphite found in rock. This pigment is also different from the "bone black" made from burned bone, which was favored both by counterfeiters and by those outside Franklin's network of printing houses.
Another of Franklin's innovations was in the paper itself. The invention of including tiny fibers in paper pulp — visible as pigmented squiggles within paper money — has often been credited to paper manufacturer Zenas Marshall Crane, who introduced this practice in 1844. But Manukyan and his team found evidence that Franklin was including colored silks in his paper much earlier.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nd.edu ...
If Franklin was alive today..DS would probably set out to destroy him. The FBI would raid his home. And the media would make crap up about him.
Probably all the original founders would be considered terrorists and a threat to our pretend democracy.
I always carry a mass spectrometer in my pocket.
In this instance, you can't blame any U.S. government for doing that.
Untold amounts of Continental currency were counterfeited on purpose by the British Empire with the sole purpose of causing hyperinflation as a part of economic warfare. It worked. The fake bills unleashed in the colonies/states did what they were intended to do.
People still remember the phrase "it ain't worth a Continental", even if they don't really know why they know it or where they heard it.
Very wise.
The states/colonies also issued their own currency by the bushel full. Rhode Island was particularly notorious for doing this.
At Intel, we found that crooks were remarking product indicating higher performance than was true. We added micro taggants to ink that were made from multiple layers of various depositions on silicon.
Benjamin Franklin himself noted:
"Paper money was in those times our universal currency. But it being the instrument with which we combated our enemies they resolved to deprive us of its use by depreciating it; and the most effectual means they could contrive was to counterfeit it. The artists they employed performed so well that immense quantities of these counterfeits which issued from the British government in New York were circulated among the inhabitants of all the states, before the fraud was detected. This operated considerably in depreciating the whole mass, first, by the vast additional quantity, and next by the uncertainty in distinguishing the true from the false; and the depreciation was a loss to all and the ruin of many. It is true our enemies gained a vast deal of our property by the operation but it did not go into the hands of our particular creditors, so their demands still subsisted, and we were still abused for not paying our debts!"
The whole mass was depreciated on purpose. The empire knew exactly what it was doing and intended the very outcome it got. This is a large reason why paper money was a huge controversy during the Constitutional Convention and eventually we had gold-backed money and actual metal money. Hyperinflation caused by a foreign combatant leaves a lasting mark in the minds for generations.
As a side note to this thread, please consider the following.
"Researchers decipher the secrets of Benjamin Franklin's paper money"
Given that Benjamin Franklin was one of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, he probably supported Article I, Section 10, Clause 1, which prohibits the states from using anything but gold and silver currency for legal tender.
"Article I, Section 10, Clause 1: No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts [emphases added]; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."
Trump 47 will need to lead hopefully a bunch of new state and federal patriot lawmakers and executives to decide how to redress the nation's corrupt, unconstitutional (imo) banking system.
Most, if not all, of my Confederate money looks like crap. The notes unquestionably genuine, but are not crisp and sharp like they should be. Until now, I didn’t know why. Good post.
I read Franklin’s autograph many years ago. It’s a great book.
Lol. Yeah, simple as that!
“All anyone would have had to do to spot a counterfeit was to run a bit of the ink through a mass spectrometer.”
Trouble is, this was before eBay was invented, where you could just buy them for $100.
Gum arabic? Guessing again.
p
The colonials would have known better than to buy the $100 ones anyway. Those things are just Chicom junk, not like true 18th-century craftsmanship.
Never heard that before…I love historical anecdotes like that.
I had no idea Franklin’s print shop produced 2.5 million cash bills and that whole cash bill idea was a new invention at the time. Franklin was young, from late teens to early 40s When he ran his print shop in Philadelphia. Did he also own the “Franklin Mint”? (jk)
James Franklin (Benjamin’s brother) was trained as a printer in London and he printed with skill and ambition. In the summer of 1721, he established The New England Courant. Soon, James was forbidden by the Massachusetts Assembly to publish the paper because of attacks against the establishment.
”The more things change…”
Just think of the “grievance studies” curricula that would be offered in prison.
Yeah, that’s true. I do miss the fine knurled brass knobs and elaborate wooden inlay of my great-great-grandfather’s mass spec. To say nothing of fine antique FTIRs.
Crooks in and out of the Demagogic Party really suck.
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