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A4 U.S. NEWS
Wednesday 19 July 2023

How Benjamin Franklin laid groundwork for the US dollar by foiling early

counterfeiters

By DAVID HAMILTON fillers served to make bills
AP Business Writer hardier and thus extend
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — their life over the cheaper
Benjamin Franklin was so paper preferred by crimi-
busy as an inventor, pub- nals, while his dyed threads
lisher, diplomat and U.S. added another production
founding father that it’s barrier.
easy to lose track of his ac- Similarly, Franklin’s nature-
complishments. printed images produced
Add one more to the ros- fine details that were par-
ter: his early work in printing ticularly difficult for less
colonial paper currency skilled printers to duplicate.
designed to counter a con- Later, though, the Revo-
stant threat of counterfeit- lutionary War brought on
ing. such a surge of counter-
Franklin was an early inno- feiting much of it, appar-
vator of printing techniques ently, courtesy of the British
that used colored threads, Army that the subsequent
watermarks and imprints U.S. government shunned
of natural objects such paper bills for decades in
as leaves to make it far favor of coinage. It didn’t
harder for others to create reconsider until the onset of
knockoffs of his paper bills. the Civil War in 1861, when
A team at the University of In this image provided by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, blue threads can the federal government
Notre Dame has shed new be seen in a six shillings Delaware note printed by J. Adams on January 1, 1776. Associated Press first authorized the printing
light on his methods using of dollar bills called “green-
advanced scanning tech- to identify elements such as cheaper copies.”The goal The paper also highlights backs.”
niques that reveal some of carbon, calcium and po- was to decode what type Franklin’s use of “nature Among the features in
Franklin’s methods in great- tassium in test samples. Re- of material they used,” Ma- printing,” a technique by those U.S. banknotes were,
er detail along the way, searchers also used elec- nukyan said in an interview. which he transferred the of course, colored threads.
also providing one more tron microscopes for imag- “And then we found some detailed vein patterns These remain in use today,
reason Franklin appears on ing fine details. very interesting differences of tree leaves to printing albeit in a more modern
the $100 bill. The intent, said lead au- between this money and plates. form. In today’s U.S. cur-
The new research, pub- thor Khachatur Manukyan, other printers.” These techniques raised rency, for instance, the “se-
lished Monday in the Pro- a Notre Dame associate The researchers examined numerous barriers to curity thread” is now a ver-
ceedings of the National professor of physics, was to Franklin’s penchant for in- would-be copycats. Coun- tical band embedded in
Academy of Sciences, learn more about the mate- cluding watermarks, tiny terfeiters naturally sought bills worth $5 and more that
describes data gathered rials used by Franklin and his indigo-dyed threads and to keep their costs low, and fluoresces under ultraviolet
with techniques such as network of affiliated print- “fillers” of special crystal in thus were loath to invest in light.q
spectroscopy and fluores- ers and how they served printed bills to create barri- improving their own print-
cence tests, which use light to distinguish their bills from ers to copycats. ing techniques. Franklin’s

Effort to find 2 children lost in a Pa. flash flood may soon pivot to an

underwater search

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (AP) — A broad effort to find two young siblings who were
swept away from their car during flash flooding in the Philadelphia suburbs over the
weekend may soon pivot to underwater searching, authorities said Tuesday.
Upper Makefield Fire Chief Tim Brewer provided an update near the search area, say-
ing the team was still looking for Matilda Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother Conrad
Sheils. If the children are not located by day’s end, Brewer said, the focus will be on the
water, using dive teams.
With the search in a fourth day, officials acknowledged the many that have asked to
volunteer to help but said they are not needed. Brewer asked people to avoid the area.
Some 100 officials, as well as drones and cadaver dogs, have combed the area near
the creek that drains into the Delaware River. The search has covered about 117 acres
(47 hectares), with those on land logging some 160 miles (257 kilometers), often going
back and forth over the same ground, he said.
The children are members of a Charleston, South Carolina, family that was visiting rela-
tives and friends when they got hit by a “wall of water” Saturday, Brewer said.
The children’s father, Jim Sheils, grabbed their 4-year-old son, while the children’s moth-
Yardley Makefield Marine Rescue leaving the Yardley Boat er, Katie Seley, and a grandmother grabbed the other children, Brewer said. Sheils and
Ramp along N. River Road heading down the Delaware River his son made it to safety, but Seley and the grandmother were swept away. The grand-
on Monday morning July 17, 2023, in Yardley, Pa. mother survived, but Seley was among the five people who drowned, according to the
Associated Press
Bucks County Coroner’s office.q