Money! It is filthy, dirty and
the color of it looks quite drab compared to money from other countries yet we all need it and want as much
of it that we can get our hands on. America got a new $100 bill recently and it
still looks drab and dull. Do you have currency envy? Or do you think money
should be drab and dull and important looking instead of some colorful canvas
to be traded often. Who cares what it
looks like, just give me some stuff for it.
A lot of thought goes into the
design and the color of money. Can it be considered art? These days our
currency is all about our statesmen but once awhile ago it was more adventuresome.
There was the $5 dollar bill who had the picture of a Native American in the
middle. There were The Pilgrims also on
a $5 dollar bill and Martha Washington featured on the $1 dollar bill. Lewis
and Clark on the $10 dollar bill. Back
at the end of the 19th Century there was a very ornate $5 dollar
bill known as the Education Series. It had a Renaissance style woman holding a
light bulb in her hand representing the future.
In 1929 we got the dollar we
still know today. Look at what the rest
of the world is spending is wild. They
are all colorful and creative bills. There are bank notes graced with birds and
beasts and even sports sayings. They try to capture a bit of the culture from
the country it is from, Alan Newman is
Director of Design at De La Rue which is a British security printing,
papermaking design company for
currencies around the world. They recently designed and printed the 280 Million
Libyan dollars. They design paper money from over 150 countries.
There is the two time banknote of the year
award winner the Kazakhstan 1000-tenge and the new Libyan Dinar created after
the fall of Dictator Muammar Gaddafi. On the front is the images of crowds and
on the back 17 doves above the new
Libyan flag. Guess who appears on the
most currency worldwide. Yes, it is Queen Elizabeth of the British
Commonwealth. The United States prints the most money in the world. We print
1.3 Billion Dollars per day. We make money 24 hours per day. I wish we were
actually making what it should all be worth. Most of it is replacing old dirty
bills with newer crisp ones.
America’s focus is to use technology
to trick counterfeiters as seen in the
new $100 Dollar bill. The little ribbon
in it contains hundreds of thousands of micro-lenses. When you tilt the bill
from left to right you actually tilt the image up and down. When you tilt the
bill up and down the image moves from left to right. Hey he still is Ben Franklyn. To foreigners our good old bill still screams
The United States and we like it that way for almost 100 years to come.
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