The Tech of Making Money

out in theater soon. Wow. Really, yeah, there's a single to Wall Street. Yeah. Yeah, it's got Shia La Booth in it. Anyway, So that the reason I said greed is good is because we're going to talk about currency. Yes, we are the tech of making money. Yes, what it requires to get that cash in your hot little hands. But before we get into that, I thought talk a little bit about the history of currency. This is kind of a stuff you missed in History class mini section.

What we should do is get Liz to play the first few notes of the stuff you missed in History class theme. So we'll wait. Hi, this is Jonathan, not Katie or Sarah. I am not nearly as as articulate or pretty as either of them, and I have far less hair on my head. So we want to talk about the history of currency. So the first coins. Okay, back back before there were coins, you know, essentially everything was based upon bartering, right, and then there was salt. Yeah,

well again that's also a kind of currency. But but before coins, yeah, there were some things that would represent wealth and could be used in the currency. Cocoa beans also were used as currency at one point to help balance out trade systems. But really, you know, you got to this point where it just became really difficult to trade stuff for other stuff, right, So that's when people

started coming up with this idea of currency. It's something that represents the purchasing power so that you can get hold of something else. That person can then use that same currency to go and purchase stuff that they need. Brilliant system because it's way more portable than carrying a cow and three chickens with you whenever you want to go and buy some wheat and I'll ferguson you're not, yeah,

fight me. So anyway, let's let's go back to Lydia. Lydia, that Encyclopedia Lydia, which was it's a an empire that was well, where modern day Turkey is now, there was a Lydian king who decided to start making coins. Do you know this guy's name? Yes, you do, you just don't know who it is. It's Creases, Oh yes, Cress. Yes, to be rich as Creases. Well, the reason we say rich as Creases is because Crisis is the guy who came up with this idea of stamping coins with a

imperial emblem on them. They weren't known as Cress pieces, were they. Oh you know what, folks, if you could have seen his face leading up to that, I could tell that he had something and I almost wish I had not paused for breath. Uh So, yeah, Crisis came up with this idea of of stamping metal ingots to create coins. This is around six b C. So that's kind of where the idea came from. Now the idea for a currency as in paper notes that came later later,

Um yeah, because I mean, who the heck trust paper? Right? Chinese? Did the Chinese came up with the idea for paper notes well before anyone else. Did you bring up a good point? Please? Trust? Trust is very important. Yes, it's all about trust. Currency is based upon trust uh. In

the United States until ninety one. That trust is that the piece of paper or the coin that you held represented a certain amount of gold, right, and that in theory, you could go to the US government and exchange your currency for the equivalent value of equivalent amount of gold that would be the same as the value of the

currency you were handing over. Right, So you're you're giving them a piece of paper with Benjamin Franklin's picture on it, and we're going to give you gold in return, dollars worth of gold exactly, since it's a Franklin, because it's all about the Benjamin's baby. But in ninety one, the US decided to abandon the gold standard. It really wasn't practical, I mean there was. They reached a point where if everyone turned in their currency, there would not be enough

gold to support that. They just there's none of gold in the reserves to support the currency. So now um currency is kind of the trust is based upon a group hallucination that the money is actually worth something much better. Now, speaking to our producer Tyler, and we came to the conclusion that our our trust in the system of money is equivalent to Wiley coyote running off the edge of the cliff before he's noticed that there's nothing under him.

You know, he never studied law, right, So if we ever notice that money is not really based on anything, they'll be panic and we'll all not be able to buy anything. So just let's continue the group hallucination, please, because I got bills to pay, y'all. And uh, but so, really money is just representing buying power, how much buying

power you have? And we want to talk about the tech of making money, and before we get into the actual tech of it, one other thing I wanted to point out is that you can't solve money problems just by printing more currency. Nope, that's not how it works. It can just doing that. First of all, you have to find a way of getting currency into circulation, So you can't you can't just print money. I mean, what are you gonna do Give it out to people for free.

That doesn't work either, because that causes inflation because now money has been devalued, it's not worth what it what used to be worth, and so now you have to have more money to buy the same things that you needed before. Um, the way that wealth is generated, the way money is actually created is through loans. This is getting really technical, but when you take out a loan, you're charged interest, which means ultimately you're paying back more

money than what you got in the first place. Yes, that's what's generating the money that that is coming out of the you know what. We you can print as much money as you want to get into circulation, you have to have the loan system there. Yeah, also was not very big in the Bible. But uh, at any rate, let's get into the tech of making money, and we want I wanted to start with coins. Yeah, some of the some of the tech that they used to make money is actually very very old. Yeah, some of it.

Some of it has been around for centuries and it requires a level of artistry that is phenomenal. No, I know. And and this is one of those things that any time it comes on one of our the channels that make up our parent company, one of the Discovery channels, and there's I've seen a couple of specials on how they how they make money and how they make the stuff behind money as in the paper and all the

the things that become money. Just fascinating the metal stuff. Yeah, if we're going with coins, we're gonna stick mainly to the United States, I think, mostly because I mean that's where we live, so it's the information that's easiest for us to access. But really most of these processes are similar throughout the world. They may not be using exactly the same kinds of machines, but they're using a very similar process. So to to make a coin, uh, it's

a fairly complex process. The first thing you're gonna need, um, well, there's two two main things you're gonna need. You're gonna need a die actually a pair of die um, not like dice like excited. It's not that gonna die. It's gonna say, come on, big seven, kind of like a stamp. Yes, okay, you're gonna need a really really high quality stamp, and you're gonna need metal. Uh So with designing the stamp, I guess we can start with that because that's really

the basis of all the coins that we create. There's a lot of newer tech involved in creating the stamp these days because uh in in uh in earlier times you would have to have the designer actually do this by by hand, make the design by hand first, and

computers can be used to do that. Although not always yeah, uh, in general, if you're doing it the old way, let's say you get in the old way being not that old, just so you know, because I mean the old old way is that you would develop a stamp and you would use a hammer and hand volt to create these things. But that's getting a little too old. The modern era of making currency, you have an engraver who designs the

coin two very specific standards, you know. So this is the engraver has to design the coin, and the design has to be approved before anything else can happen. Uh. And then, assuming that you're using the old method where you're you're not digitally modeling stuff, the engraver would use clay or some other modeling material to build the first model of the coin, which is going to be much larger than the the eventual actual coin will be from

that mold from that model. Rather, you create a mold using something like plastoline, and then you pour plaster of Paris into that. And this is a well plaster. The reason we use plaster of Paris is because they can pick up details, really fine details and represent them accurately. So now you've got a plaster model of the coin um and then from that you have a machine that creates a copper mole of it called a galvano. Yeah, I didn't have that, uh. And then you make an

even smaller model of it. It's called a hub, and this is made out of steel. And then you the master hub is called the dye. Uh, so that you have a steel dye that looks exactly the way your coin is gonna look, but kind of in reverse because it's a stamp. And you have to have two of those, because you have to have one for the front and one for the back. And and so that's that's how you create your your stamp. There's actually even more involved

in that. I mean, there's this whole polishing section that has to has to go through. By the time that the steel die is ready to be used, it has a mirror like finish because it's been polished so finely. M all right, So that's your stamping stuff. Now you're gonna have something to stamp right now. In in the United States, it's a mixture of copper and nickel mainly, although you also have zinc plated upper you have um or or copper plated zinc rather or not the other

way around. But why would you have zinc plated copper. That would be unusual. And we haven't always used the exact same medals throughout or end alloys. Throughout the history of currency. You can find some interesting, uh facts about the various medals they've been used. And in most cases it tends to be something like war broke out and suddenly we didn't have access to all the medals that

we used to use for coins. As a matter of fact, Um, my father, who was in World War two, UM has a box of steel pennies because during World War Two they used steel to make pennies instead of copper for reasons of the war effort. And uh so I have a whole bunch of those and they're worth you know, about a penny nice well to the government. They are

they are worth exactly what they're worth. So, um, you could have a collectible coin, who would which would be worth a lot of money to a collector can take it to the government. It's worth exactly, you know. It's just like it's a stamps are right, stamps are worth you know, if you put a very very rare you say, you put an inverted jenny an envelope, it's worth exactly to the post office. You know, postage. You'd still have

to add postage to it. You might be able to sell it to a collector for thousands of dollars, but the government's gonna take it at face value. Yes, exactly. And that's again that goes back to our trusting anyway. Um so yeah, alright, so steel pennies. Yeah, so let's talk about the metal. You get these, You get melt big bars of metal, You melt them down in a furnace, You pour them into uh inget forms, and then you can get and you cool that down, use water by

the way to cool it. Uh and then it actually uses a couple of different cooling systems. And then you take that to a rolling mill which is gonna turn it into flat sheets. Okay, now, um, the US meant pretty much gets these these flat sheets and coils. Yes, they feed the coil. Coils are let's see, I've actually got the stats here. A foot wide, feet long, abound as thick as the final coin tends to be, and

it weighs about six thousand pounds. Yes, yes, actually there there are some great photos of this, along with a lot more detail than we'll probably get into in the podcast at us MINT dot gov. Yes, some details and the photos or you know, because you can see these huge coils of metal, which are pretty awesome. It's pretty intimidating really because you think, wow, that's that's a lot of metal. Um. Now, these strips, these coils get fed

through a machine called a blanking press or the blanking presser. Essentially, what that does is it cuts the metal sheets into the coin shape. Um. Yes, actually cuts them into slightly the slightly larger diameter than the way the coin will eventually appear, because it has to create a little extra metal on the edges to create a HM. So you put it through the blanker, the blanking pressor get and you get the blanks. That's what the unmarked flat discs

of metal are called. You get the blanks. You then have to soften them, yes, which you do by putting them into a furnace. You the furnaces about seven degrees celsius or so this softens them a little bit. Then you have to cool them and clean them. Uh. And it's it's it's a process that actually uses various chemicals to clean them. You're not just you know, putting them through a washing machine. Although it's in a machine that

does look like washing machine. It does spin them. Um. Yeah, although that's not necessarily true for for everything, because the golden dollars slightly different process in which they use steel shot to the kind of like bees. Yeah, a little bit like bebes. You put it in there in that way. It polishes them through brute force. Yeah. So yeah, the the spinny thing. Did you happen to see what that's called spinning? Well, did you see what it's called? Um,

it's the whirl away. So sp thing is not that big a leap from the technical term of the world away. That's true. Actually, it sounds like something you did to see at the local carnival at your shopping mall. It sets up and you're going, I'm not sure I want to find that thing. Yeah, and and yeah exactly. We'll polish away your impurities and will also take your money. So you then, uh, once once you've cleaned and dried the coins. Um, they moved to a thing called the

upsetting mill. Yes, it's very upsetting. I was going to say, I'm sure they feel terrible after that. Right, So this is the thing that creates the rim around the edge of the coin and Uh. So once the upsetting mill is done, the coins should be the right diameter. It should be the same size that's going to be once it's stamped. Um and uh. And it's done for a very important reason. It helps and you know, by raising the rim it helps them stack the coins a little

bit better. You'll notice it the you know, it's got sort of a firm edge around. It also helps keep the coins from a routing. And that's because that's one of the benefits of using coins. One of the reasons the United States government is pushing the golden dollars so much is they last a whole lot longer than paper money. Yeah, you don't have to keep making as much. Yes you can. You know, you can make it as as circulation requires.

But um, you don't have to worry about you know, the useful life of a dollar might be a decade, but the useful life of a coin is could be really a long time. Actually, I don't think paper money.

I just I just used that as I just pulled that out of nowhere that somebody would write in and say, now someone has the podcast already and they have written in and to you, sir or madam, I would like to say, please listen to the show all the way through before you write us, because sometimes we correct ourselves.

Not often, I will grant you, but sometimes so. At any rate, the next stage is where they might have to to um, well, I guess the coining is the next stage to bring on whether or not you need to put ridges on the edge. The reads, the reads, Yes, yes, reading, reading is fundamentals, especially if you need to. But yes, it's R E, D, I N G. Right, and then it would be coining. So I'm glad that you brought

that up because I almost totally forgot. And this is where we add the actual design of the coin to the blank which now, by the way, it's no longer called a blank. Yes, once you've added the rim, it's become a new thing called the plan chet. Yes, no relation to Kate. Yeah, thanks plan chet as in poppies

and um will make you sleep. Yes. So once you get to the coining, this is where those die that we talked about the come in and you've got They usually refer to the die in two different terms, very simple. You got the the anvil and the hammer. The anvil is going to remain stationary. The hammer is going to strike the coin which is resting on the anvil, and the force of the impact is going to stamp that

design on the planet and make it a coin. And uh yeah, it resembles a hammer and an anvil and function more so than form, because I mean, you wouldn't recognize it as a hammer and an anvil in the you know, looney tune sense of something dropping on your head. Although I wouldn't want either one of those to drop on my head. I also would not want those to drop on your head. But um yeah, after after they become coins, of course they are. They go to a

bin where they are inspected. Somebody takes a look at them, make sure it makes sure that they are okay, and I mean anything that that's not acceptable goes back for recycling, as is the webbing for when they wake from when they make the blanks. The metal that goes that that

they can't use, it's around it that gets recycled as well. Right, All the webbing is the excess metal after the stamping process, because of course, if you stamp a bunch of circular things out of a sheet of metal, you're gonna be left with excess pieces. Yeah, and quite a bit of metal so that all gets melted down and recycled, as do any irregular coins. Um. They actually the the first irregular coins. Before you melt them down, they have to be destroyed or they have to be uh marred, so

that it's clear that they are not valid currency. To do so, they put them in special machines called wafflers. I love the technology jargon of making currency wafflers. Man, it sounds like a county fair. I know, it's a county fair where all the prize is our money. Sign me up. Um so yeah, these uh, these actually use high pressure rollers to kind of put a predetermined pattern, a ridged pattern across the coin that automatically marks them

as being not viable. And then they get sent to the recycling furnace and then uh, the the coins that are actually acceptable they fall into a box called a trap. Now this part I don't like. I don't want to fall into a trap at my world Away waffler fair. I'm just waiting for you to do it, to fall into a trap. Back, bar intoe, it's a trap. Nothing could penetrate the shields. Um. That was terrible. That was like the world's worst admiral. Acbar accent. Please don't write me.

Remember what I said about pausing the podcast. Um, I have a quick thing of trivia before we move on to currency, to paper paper money. Do you know why, out of all the coins in that erin United States circulation, why the penny and nicol are the only ones to have images that don't face to the left. No, why, Chucks, I was gonna hoping you knew that's gonna make this weird. No, okay, Um, So there are a lot of different theories, you know. So the penny, of course has a Lincoln there, and

the nicol has a Jefferson. Yes, Um, has nothing to do with who they are beyond a very simple point. So Abraham Lincoln penny was meanted back in and it was to commemorate the hundred year anniversary of Lincoln's birth UH and Theodore Roosevelt, who was president at the time, chose a sculptor named Victor David Brenner to design the penny. Now, Brenner had created a bust of a plaque really not a bust, but a plaque of of Lincoln that had

him facing to the UH, to the right. It was based off a photo of Lincoln where Lincoln was facing to the right. That's the reason why the penny Lincoln faces to the right. It's not there's no conspiracy or weird philosophical thing about it. It's because the photo that was used to create a plaque that was in turn used to create the portrait in the penny, Lincoln was facing to the right. All right, Now, Jefferson is a

little weird. He started facing out on the left. Ba uh two thousand three, decided to look around, he did, No, he didn't. He was in no position at that point. But the President had enacted a law to revise the nickel. And this was to commemorate the by centennary, by centenary of Lewis and Clark. Oh, which makes part perfect sense, right, If you're gonna celebrate Lewis and Clark, why not changed the nickel. Oh you know, he was the guy who sent them out there. Yeah. Yeah, So the US meant

decided to make a series of nickels. Yes, so it's not just one. So two thousand four series Jefferson was facing to the left, right, and the reverse of the nickel was changed. On two thousand five, Jefferson's facing to the right. The word liberty is uh engrave next to him is based off of Jefferson's handwriting and two thousand six he's facing forward and it's based off a portrait

that was done by Rembrett Peel. So uh this and it also was the first coin in US circulation, actual official US coin where it did not feature the person on the coin depicted in profile. Right, So there you go. That's your trivia, all right. There's no weird conspiracy thing behind any of it. It's just, you know, just like anything in the government, tends to have a pretty mundane explanation at the end of it. But let's get on

to paper money. Yeah, while the while the Mint works on the coins, we've got a lot of people working on paper money, including the Federal Reserve Board, UM, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the U. S. Secret Service are all working on the tech of paper money. And uh, you know, paper money, you would figure has a quite a bit of security risk involved, because I mean, shouldn't you be able to throw a whole bunch of dollar bills on a photo copying machine and have ability

to print as many copies as you want. Well, it doesn't quite work that way, but paper money is a lot easier to copy, I would assume than a coin which you would actually have to mint, right. Um. Yeah, on the face of it, it is much simpler to make the copy. Uh, I can't make heads their tails of it, right. So in order to make it more difficult, you have to come up with various various schemes to create a secure paper money currency. And so that in

the United States, they've used lots and lots of different techniques. Um. For one, printed on special paper. Yes, that's one of those things that you would say is very non technical, but I would I would beg to differ because they're the paper is a certain composition, it's got to have certain types of red and blue threads that go through it now, um, And it comes from from a supplier, a particular supplier who's been doing it for a very very long time. And it's got a little bit of

linen in it too. Yeah, it's made from cotton linen, not wood. Yeah, so it's it's got it's got a very particular feel. And if you pick up a counterfeit dollar, there's a good chance that if it's not made on the same sort of stuff, you would tell almost immediately like, well, this is the wrong weight and texture for a dollar. This this doesn't feel right. Um. So there's one thing. You've got your your base material, which is a little, uh,

is a little different. You've then got the various dyes of ink where it's in the old dollars it was you know, like this greenish ink where that was kind of hard to to replicate. It's even more difficult now because now they use inks that are have sort of a photoreactive almost a photoreactive kind of element to them, and that if you tilt the dollar bill a certain way, the color changes. Um. It's because the special inks that they're using. Again, it's hard to replicate that. So it's

a it's an anti counterfeiting measure. Um. And I'm talking specifically about the inks that are used to print like the dollar amount, as opposed to the color of the paper itself. The US government will tell you that basing a decision on whether a bill is counterfeit or not based solely upon the color of the bill is a bad idea, Yes, because that can that can at least

be simulated somewhat easily. Um. But another very simple way, really a very elegant way that the money is going an anti counterfeit measure on it is that it uses lots of really tiny writing, Yes, it does, microprinting, microprinting and tiny line patterns throughout the bill, which are very difficult to get a high resolution picture of, you know, most especially early earlier in the days of printing money, it was very hard to get a an accurate um

simulation of those. You pretty much would need to get hold of the original plates um because those those it's so tiny that it was very difficult to make a simulation. Yeah. Yeah, Well, the the the circular lines around the portrait sort of create this you know more effect where if you tried to stick it on a photo copy or machine um

that it would give you a very blurry appearance. Because I mean, that's the whole point of the microprinting and the lines, is that if you try to use modern technology like a simple way like that without trying to make plates yourself, and you're just trying to to scan a copy on your computer scanner or using a photocopier, it's just it's gonna be so blurry that it's become will become obvious to somebody you try to pass that bill too, that it's not real, right, So let's talk

a little bit briefly, and then I think we'll finish up with kind of some of the new designs that are gonna be on the hundred dollar bill that shot up in. Let's talk a little bit about what they're actually doing to make this money. Um, they're using the intaglio printing method. Intaglio, I listened to the g always fools me. Yeah, Well maybe in Italy it's pronounced that way, but darn it here in the South we're calling it

on taglio. Um. Anyway, the you have an engraver, just like the coins, who creates a an original steel plate and it's gonna have very very fine detail on it. And then you have a You put the plates into the printing press. You coat the plates with the correct ink. You then wipe the excess inc off the plates so that the only inc still on the plates is collected

in the little grooves. Yes, and then you run the paper through the printing press and the press goes up and down, pressing against the paper and very very rapidly, and it actually creates little raised elements on the bill, because that's what gets get pushed up into the grooves and then coated with the ink. Right, it's fifteen thousand pounds per square inch um. It is going to be embossing that paper again. And this is another thing that

helps you detect if it's a counterfeit bill. You run your finger across the bill and if you don't feel that texture, that that difference, and I mean it's it's a tiny, tiny difference in height, but we can feel that. If it feels perfectly smooth, then you're thinking something's a little hinky here. That's a technical term. That's right. And also, not everything is printed on the bill when it runs through that first um, that first printing run of and and they have to print one side and then let

and then print the other side. You can't print both at the same time. But like the Treasury Seal, the Federal Reserve Seal, and the serial numbers are not printed during this process. That's right, which makes sense because I mean, you couldn't put the serial number on the smaster steel plate because they would all have the same serial number, thus negating the whole purpose of it in the first place. Yeah,

that's also another sign. If you have a bunch of bills that all have the same serial number, Chances are those might be hinky. So yeah, you have to run them through printing at least three times, once for the front, once for the back, and then again to the extra stuff added um, and depending upon the complexity of the bill, it may be another printing run. Because you're talking about

using different dyes. You're using the special photo of reflective diyes that kind of stuff or dies that show up when you put them under an ultraviolet light, that kind of thing. So let's talk. I'm sorry, I was gonna

say that. The way they do the the ink, now it's got metallic flakes in it appear because of the light diffraction and changing the wavelength depending on the metallic flakes position, it makes it appear green at some angles and black at others, which is an effect very hard to duplicate unless you have the exclusive inc used by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Right. Yeah, kind of hard to get your hands on. As it turns out,

it's kind of the whole idea behind it. So uh. Now, in two thousand three, that's when the United States government started to redesign currency, and the first bill was the twenty dollar bill. To get the new redesign, and that's when we started seeing some of these these elements, these more advanced anti counterfeiting measures added in where you know, that's where everyone's like, hey, this bill looks weird because now there's this kind of peach coloration and the dye

doesn't look exactly the same. Well, that was all to kind of help with the whole anti counterfeiting movement that that new bill launched on October nine, two thousand and three, and also had another secure d feature in it. What's if I'm not mistaken, that was the first one to have the ribbon yes, yes, where it has the security thread. He has the security thread, which and again, if the security threat is not in the bill, then that's the

science of counterfeit um. And I remember people doing that specifically, uh snipping. It's like, look, it's got a security threat and they snip, you know, just the end of the bill and they pull it out to show that it was intact and like, yeah, but now no, it's no longer security threat. You're gonna have to spend that someplace where people aren't paying attention, because people do pay attention.

That's the whole point. Yeah, the That's one of the advantages of having paper currency is that if you want to redesign your currency, you know, you don't have to wait forever for the old currency to wear out. It's going to do that on its own, just through use, just being handled. So eventually the older bills, which you know are still legal tender, will be so warned that they'll just get cycled out of currency. And banks will do it too. I mean, like you actually exchange the

old bills for new ones and you destroy the old ones. Yes, and you can buy a bag of shredded money from the government. Yeah, they'll be happy to sell it to you for actual money. Yes. Um, yeah, I'm not confetti for my party. Uh. And the new hundred dollar bill is going to have some pretty cool stuff in it too. It's got you know, you've got like the watermark, you've got the special die, you have a three D ribbon

in there. Yeah. The new bill is going into circulation in February of next year, which for us now at the moment when you're recording it, it's and it's uh eleven is when it comes out. We're recording just in case not able to follow. Mr Pullet syn text. Yeah, I'm not able to follow it. I'm trying to wean myself from coffee. Um. So, yes, that has got a brand new security threat which is a lot more obvious than the old one, and you can you can learn more about this at new money dot gov, but we

can go through some of the details. You can see on it. It has some liberty bells and uh and the hun read as the denomination of the bill on there, and when you tilt it, they seem to move around. They're using kind of this weird little holographic kind of effect and you might be wondering how they do this, so we Yeah, as it turns out, the they are being fairly secret about a secretive about the whole process, I guess mainly because they don't want people making them themselves.

But at any rate, it's really hard to find out exactly the techniques they're using. Now we can, we could make some guesses, but we are currently running up to almost thirty five minutes in length on this show, so I'm thinking that we're gonna have to not guess now. But yeah. The other the other major news security feature is the bell in the inkwell. And there's an inkwell and bell liberty bell printed on it, and I think it's a liberty bell looked like and um at one angle.

This is again a trick of light diffraction and one angle, they both look copper. But if as you move the bill and change the direction um, the bill appears to change to a green color. And part of the reason they have added these new particularly new security features is to also help make these new bills UH detectable if you're in a low light situation, which was not always

the case. It's it's not always easy, like in a poorly lit restaurant, to figure out whether you have the money without holding the bill up to the light, which is not necessarily convenient. So it's hard to tell a counterfeit bill when you're taking somebody's money at the at the table right, or say at a toll booth where it's the middle of the night and someone's going through a toll booth and using a large bill and expecting

lots of change back. Yes, I'm not saying that that's a place where people you try and pass off a lot of counterfeit money. I'm just saying that's a place where people try and pass off a lot of counterfeit money. Okay, Okay, I had no idea. Uh well, you know you watch enough movies or you have a relative who's in the police force. Um, you find these things out. So we're gonna wrap this up because we have gone on and

on and on about this. Like I said, I find this this really fascinating, and with the hundred dollar bill coming out, that's going to be the most technologically advanced dollar that we've ever seen. Um. Also, just in case you were wondering, the hundred dollar bill is the highest denomination that they currently print now, although they have printed higher denominations in the past and those are no longer

being introduced. Yeah, because we can do electronic transfers now so that we don't need those higher denominations the way we used to do. You know what the highest was, I can't remember grand and I was gonna dan. Do you know who was on it? Um? No, Woodrow Wilson share some services. You know. I looked that up a long time ago, probably like a year, year and a half ago, and it was just fascinating, but I didn't

look it up again for the podcast. So yeah, you guys who played bar trivia, if you're ever asked what was the highest denomination bill ever printed in the United States. It was one hundred thousand dollars and Woodrow Wilson was on it. Although somebody didn't try to pass a one million dollar bill at a Walmart and I had this fucking dude, no real, Okay, next time I'm going to target al Right, guys, Well, this wraps up this discussion.

I hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or you have a suggestion for a future podcast, you can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and we will talk to

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