Researchers Decipher the Secrets of Benjamin Franklin's Paper Money

hubie writes:

A rare window into the early American monetary history - thanks to techniques from physics:

Benjamin Franklin may be best known as the creator of bifocals and the lightning rod, but a group of University of Notre Dame researchers suggest he should also be known for his innovative ways of making (literal) money.

During his career, Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies using what the researchers have identified as highly original techniques, as reported in a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[...] "Benjamin Franklin saw that the Colonies' financial independence was necessary for their political independence. Most of the silver and gold coins brought to the British American colonies were rapidly drained away to pay for manufactured goods imported from abroad, leaving the Colonies without sufficient monetary supply to expand their economy," Manukyan said.

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. [...]

"To maintain the notes' dependability, Franklin had to stay a step ahead of counterfeiters," said Manukyan. "But the ledger where we know he recorded these printing decisions and methods has been lost to history. Using the techniques of physics, we have been able to restore, in part, some of what that record would have shown."

[...] 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.

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