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2nd, representatives of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Federal Reserve, and
the Secret Service described plans for making changes in Federal Reserve Notes
beginning in 1985 (although the long range target is 1988) ... These changes, which will
probably include taggents, security threads, and colors, and may include holograms,
diffraction gratings, or watermarks, will be made in coordination with six other nations:
Canada, Britain, Japan, Australia, West Germany and Switzerland. Japan, for example,
will begin recalling its present currency in November, 1984, and have it nearly completed
within six months ... According to the government, the only reason for the currency
changes is to deter counterfeiting. Although it was admitted by one spokesman in the
group that there would have to be a call-in of our present currency for new currency to
work, the spokesmen for the government were adamant in saying that there was no other
motive for a currency change...”
According to law, only the Treasury Secretary has the authority to change the currency.
Over $3 million had been spent under ‘counterfeit prevention’ authority for the development
of the new money, which according to the Currency Design Act (HR6005) hearings would be
issued by the Federal Reserve Board. It was first reported by the Patterson Organization in
Cincinnati, Ohio, that in a July, 1983 market survey in Buena Park, California, people were
shown proposed designs for “new U.S. dollar bills.” The variations shown, consisted of each
denomination being a different color; Federal Reserve seals replaced with a design utilizing
reflective ink; and other optical devices like holograms (a process which produces a threedimensional
image which can change color depending on the angle it is viewed), and multilayer
diffraction gratings (similar to a hologram); as well as bills containing metal security threads,
and planchettes (red and blue colored discs incorporated into the paper, similar to threads) to
trigger scanning equipment which would detect its presence, and to sort cash faster. A consumer
research firm from Illinois was hired by the Treasury Department to gauge the public’s reactions
to the various designs.
It was shown that a drastic change would not be accepted, so a process of incrementalism
was adopted. It was decided that the Bureau of Printing and Engraving would have a fine
metallic strip running through the currency, leaving the basic design intact; however, they later
decided to use a clear imprinted polyester strip, woven into the paper, running vertically on the
left side of the Federal Reserve Seal. The length of the translucent polyester filament reads
“USA100” for $100 bills, “USA50” for $50 bills, and so on; and can only be read if held up to
direct light. It was reported that a company called Checkmate Electronics, Inc., which
manufactures the equipment needed to scan checks, scanned the new money, and found the strip
to contain “machine detectable” aluminum. Their scan produced an indecipherable bar code.
Though the basic design did not change, there was microscopic type printed around the
picture which reads, “The United States of America,” but appeared to only be a line. This
currency with oversized, off-center portraits, was introduced in 1996 with the $100 bills, then
$50 bills and $20 bills (1998), and culminated with $10’s and $5’s in 2000. The Government
discontinued printing any of the old money, and began emptying their vaults to get rid of the old
bills. The old money was never recalled, and continued to be circulated.
Then in June, 2002, only a few years after the last makeover, the rumors of colored money
became a fact, as the Bureau of Engraving and Printing announced that further changes were
being made to our money for security reasons. In October, 2003, the new, colored $20 bill (the
most counterfeited note), was introduced. The new bill retained the security thread, color-shifting