TITS BITS OF CURRENCY

• Serge Beaure, a French engineer had invented multi colour Intaglio.
• French Paper Mill at Vic-le-compte - It produces probably the thinnest Bank note Paper available.  It is also the most expensive and wears out a bit more quickly than most.  But it does have a very satisfactory Gallic rattle when new.  The paper is made of cotton, linen and ramie fibre.
• Finnish ten-mark coin designed by sculptor Antti Neuvonen has been chosen  the most beautiful coin in circulation in the world.
• In 1970, Netherlands introduced tactile dots, an indication of value for the physically impaired.  This was the first introduction of the blind marks on the bank notes.
• In 1990, Netherlands was the first country to introduce bar code in the bank notes.  A special decoder can read this code.  Under the bar code, small individual code numbers are printed.  This was designed by Bram de Does.
• Effective security is no guarantee of artistic satisfaction.  In 1926, when Netherlands brought a twenty-guilder note with 28 modest rosettes, the Press slated it as "negotiable wall paper".  "The Universal rose engine" , the guilloche machine was destined ultimately to lose the battle for survival to the computer.
• The average life of Canadian Notes was found to be around 10 months for the lower denominations of 2, 5 and 10 dollars; about 1½ years for 20 dollar notes, 3 years for 50 dollars and 6 years for 100 dollars.
• A paper money and design museum is open for public in London.  Japan also opened Bank note Museum for public.
• For detecting the hidden watermarks, which have gone obscure due to printing over them, the Bank of Netherlands developed Aqua watermark reading system.
• The Bank of Netherlands developed a detector system to find out the presence of Intaglio on the bank notes. The machine is called as the Intaglio scanning and recognition device (ISARD), which uses reflected light to check for the presence of Intaglio printing on the bank note.