The Dollar Bill

Collin McClain

The paper used for U.S. currency is 75% cotton and 25% linen. When this paper arrives at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP), which is in charge of currency manufacture, it comes on pallets with a proscribed number of sheets, a set number of pallets at a time. All bills are printed with green ink on the back and black ink on the front; higher denomination bills also include color-shifting and metallic inks on some parts of the design. To get to this point, the bills first had to be designed, steel dies engraved to make the printing plates, and on some denominations an offset pre-print onto the paper. After printing the bank notes go through a process of inspection, which is rapidly automating. During this the bills are digitally photographed and analyzed to ensure they are not defective. It is also at this final stage that the bills are printed with their Federal Reserve ID numbers, the final seals, and each bill’s unique serial number (“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – U.S. Currency” n.d.).

    The markings in the dollar bill amount to a series of codes. The serial number starts with a letter indicating the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) that ordered it. This is followed by an eight digit number which advances in sequence, and lastly by another letter denoting the number of times all eight digit serials have been printed for that FRB.  This all resets with each new ‘series,’ which changes when the bill is redesigned. For the $1, which has remained almost entirely the same since 1963, this change comes with new signatures from the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer. The bill also is marked with its plate number and position on the plate. Together, these features ensure each bill’s uniqueness from all other $1 bills (“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – $1 Note” n.d.; “U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – Serial Numbers” n.d.).

The process of manufacture is relatively transparent — the tools, sequence of steps, etc., publicly available information. This contrasts with many corporations’ reliance on trade secrets to avoid competition. For security the bills rely on the fact that they’re difficult to manufacture, the special watermarks and inks that go into them, and regulations on the materials used in their construction, whether that is the paper or the press. The automation of production, the use of computer algorithms to affirm the validity of bills, and the use of visual codes as security features all serve to make these pieces of paper into identifiable tokens in a system of representation. This fits the bill within logics of assembly, digitization, and security. Later in a bill’s life these logics will continue as it passes through ATMs, deft hands, and vending machines.

    Its layers of security and its unique position as an interchangeable but numerically distinct part of a greater whole allow the paper dollar to encode a fractionated trust, trackable percents of a larger system. As “Legal Tender For All Debts,” this is trust in a particular infrastructure, in the methods and existence of the state. It is a guaranteed form of debt payment from an infrastructure of power, with signatures stamped onto the face of dead presidents. But unlike the digital monetary system, the paper dollar doesn’t record the hand that holds it. Ownership is merely a matter of temporary possession. This shows a particular logic around exchange and data collection — it doesn’t matter the route the bill took to be where it is, just that it is there. This breaks down in network nodes like banks where serial numbers are recorded and dye packs placed among the bills as anti-theft mechanisms that mark particular bills as having passed through that place — a way to tie down the slipperiness of loose cash.

Left: https://www.futurity.org/addiction-motivation-1612212/cocaine-dollar-bill-addiction_1600/
Right: http://rocs.northwestern.edu/research/wgstory.html 

When the dollar is put into circulation and interacts with the wider world, it becomes a carrier wave for everything from social data to material residues. A classic example is the contamination of dollar bills with cocaine (Oyler, Darwin, and Cone 1996). Here it acts as an alternative, analog data source demonstrating the presence of cocaine within the system while not carrying any further information. The above study claims some 79% of U.S. currency shows traces of cocaine, which indicates that traces of the drug remain on the bills for a fairly long period of time. A much shorter period for a bill to act as a carrier is when it is tested by a Counterfeit Detector Pen, which uses an ink to test the composition of the paper. According to the manufacture of these pens the ink “should fade in 12-24 hours depending on conditions” if the paper is genuine U.S. paper currency (Dri Mark n.d.).

Image: https://wheresgeorgerubberstamps.com/blogs/news/test-1

    An example of intentional marking and tracing of bills takes place with Wheres George? (https://www.wheresgeorge.com), a web based project where Georgers stamp bills with the website’s URL and enter the serial number of their bills and their zip code into the website’s database. Then anyone who later finds that bill can look up where the bill has been and add to its lineage through the site, plotting its travels one new zip code at a time. The data created through the Wheres George? project has been used for several studies on human mobility, applying the knowledge to issues such as epidemic forecasting (D. Brockmann 2008; Hufnagel, Brockmann, and Geisel 2004; Dirk Brockmann and Theis 2008; D. Brockmann, Hufnagel, and Geisel 2006).

    Encoding social data, money is earmarked, separated, or allocated to particular uses depending on its source, moral hygiene (clean/dirty), or even sentimental value, something as simple as a dollar bill can transform from its nature as a token in a system of debt into a tool for managing complex social relations (Zelizer 1994). 

Further notes:

More information on the printing process at: https://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/howmoneyismade.html 

Statistics on currency in circulation, print orders, etc. and be found here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/coin_data.htm 

While an analog, visual medium the BEP will issue a free currency reader to any legally blind resident of the U.S. https://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrencyreaderpgm.html

The dollar bill of course is encoded into a set of regulations that determine its legal use, reproduction, defacement, etc. A preliminary list here: https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/lawsandregulations.html (“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – Laws and Regulations” n.d.).

Large but difficult to calculate portions of printed US dollars exist outside the country’s borders (Judson 2012).

Bibliography:

Brockmann, D. 2008. “Anomalous Diffusion and the Structure of Human Transportation Networks.” The European Physical Journal Special Topics 157 (1): 173–89. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2008-00640-0.

Brockmann, D., L. Hufnagel, and T. Geisel. 2006. “The Scaling Laws of Human Travel.” Nature 439 (7075): 462–65. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04292.

Brockmann, Dirk, and Fabian Theis. 2008. “Money Circulation, Trackable Items, and the Emergence of Universal Human Mobility Patterns.” IEEE Pervasive Computing 7 (4): 28–35. https://doi.org/10.1109/MPRV.2008.77.

Dri Mark. n.d. “FAQ.” Drimark. Accessed March 2, 2020. https://www.drimark.com/faq/.

Hufnagel, L., D. Brockmann, and T. Geisel. 2004. “Forecast and Control of Epidemics in a Globalized World.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101 (42): 15124–29. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0308344101.

Judson, Ruth. 2012. “Crisis and Calm: Demand for U.S. Currency at Home and Abroad from the Fall of the Berlin Wall to 201,” November, 47.

Oyler, Jonathan, William D. Darwin, and Edward J. Cone. 1996. “Cocaine Contamination of United States Paper Currency.” Journal of Analytical Toxicology 20 (4): 213–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/jat/20.4.213.

“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – $1 Note.” n.d. Accessed March 3, 2020. https://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/1note.html.

“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – Laws and Regulations.” n.d. Accessed March 2, 2020. https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/lawsandregulations.html.

“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – Serial Numbers.” n.d. Accessed March 3, 2020. https://www.moneyfactory.gov/resources/serialnumbers.html.

“U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing – U.S. Currency.” n.d. Accessed March 2, 2020. https://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/howmoneyismade.html.

Zelizer, Viviana A. Rotman. 1994. The Social Meaning of Money. New York: BasicBooks.

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