February 19, 2021 • 39 mins
What is a polymer banknote? We look at this special type of currency, how it's made and why it's important.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and it is time
for a classic episode. This episode originally published on February
(00:24):
two thousand fourteen. It is called It's all about the Polymers.
I don't, I don't even. I mean, I guess I
was going for and all about the Benjamin's thing there.
I don't. It was a long time ago. I don't
remember coming up with that title. But yes, we're gonna
talk about polymers today, long chain molecules. Let's get into it.
(00:47):
This is a topic that was sent to us by
one of our beloved listeners. Correct, Yes, this is listener
Matt via Twitter. I who said to us, in time
for Australia Day on Sunday, how about a podcast for
Australia's polymer money. And you know what Australia Day was
several Sundays ago. Yes, this is This is not an
up to date and current podcast, so we apologize for
(01:10):
not managing to put it out before the day. We're
just really early for next year, is the thing? Yeah,
See here's the thing. Uh, time happens earlier in Australia
than it does over here. And that's the reason. I
don't think that's the reason. Let's just I'm trying to
cover our tracks here, okay. So yeah, we wanted to
talk about polymer currency and what is it? Uh? And
(01:31):
why is it important? Why are so many other places
looking into it or have already adopted it at least
in some measure. Yeah, because Australia was that the first
country to adopt an entire line of polymer notes to
completely switch over their paper currency to polymer currency. And
that was back in six although they had started using
(01:52):
polymer notes way back, and other countries had had experimented
with it before, but no country had switched completely over
to polymer currency before Australia did it. Right, And now
more than twenty five other nations are are issuing some
polymer notes and and more adding themselves to the list
(02:12):
all the time. The UK, for example, has plans to
introduce both a five pound Winston Churchill note and a
ten pound Jane Austin notes starting in seen respectively. That's
pretty cool. And so yeah, we're looking at upwards of
a billion of these entering circulation right in three years
in the UK alone, right, Yeah, it's it's a pretty
(02:34):
big rollout. They're going to be withdrawing all of their
paper notes for those two current those two denominations, right right,
So that makes makes us wonder like, what's the big
deal here. So we're gonna set some some foundation before
we get into all the stuff about polymers, because you know,
it helps to actually understand bank notes in general, currency
in general before we jump into that. So a bank
(02:57):
note is just a unit of current currency. Most of
you out there probably very familiar with some sort of banknote.
Here in the United States, we talk about dollar bills,
five dollar bills, ten dollar bills, that kind of thing.
As you were saying, in the UK, it's the pound,
you know, in a lot of European nations it's the euro,
that sort of stuff. Well, it's this is the These
are the actual physical bills that represent certain amounts of value.
(03:17):
It represents a specific amount of value for a given
nation exactly. So yeah, five dollar bill in the United
States represents five dollars pretty straightforward when you get down
to it, Which is nice because as you've listen to
this podcast, you know some of the topics we cover
not so straightforward, right. Also, I'd like to apologize on
behalf of myself for for amount of value. That was
(03:40):
just a really spectacular phrasing. Oh, I get so redundantly
repetitive that I have to reiterate it occasionally. So at
any rate, we want to talk also about what a
polymer is. Now, a polymer is a type of molecule.
It's does not necessarily mean natural versus synthetic. That there
are actually both natural polymers and some etic polymers out there.
(04:01):
This is a specific classification of molecules. Now, a polymer
is made up of monomers. Not a big surprise there.
Polymer means the poly means many, right, and mono means one.
So a monomer is kind of like the base unit
of a polymer, which you end up being these long
chains of of molecules. They tend to be pretty resilient
(04:21):
and flexible, at least on the molecular level, depending upon uh,
what they're made out of. When you get it onto
the macro scale, they may be more or less flexible
in other materials. But if you're looking at natural polymers,
that includes stuff like silk or amber and synthetic polymers
include man made rubber. Natural rubber also a polymer, obviously
(04:43):
not a synthetic one, thus the word natural um. But
another synthetic polymer would be plastics. So uh, these have
turned out to be incredibly useful materials for all sorts
of industries, the technology industry in particular. I mean, are
electronics wouldn't be what they are without these kind of
plastic polymers, right. Plastics make it possible, yeah, because I mean,
(05:06):
otherwise we'd have to find some other material to make
everything out of and it would be all the prices
would go up. Plastics cheap, it's easy to produce. So
these are all really important elements that you want in
any kind of material. And so some people started thinking,
well maybe we could apply that to currency. So if
you look at it, we talked about what a bank
(05:26):
note does, we talked about what a polymer is, So
a polymer bank note is a banknote, mayor of Pombers Hey,
and we can end the podcast right here. Well we'll
keep going though, because you know me, I can't stop it.
Just like whatever. It is like three and a half minutes.
So we're looking at these type of synthetic materials, mainly
the plastics family, that to be used as a bank
(05:49):
note UH. Using plastic. According to all the authorities who
are issuing these polymer currency UH denominations, it's actually cheaper
than using paper in the long run. I mean, you know,
of course, the costs of setting up a program to
create these things, it's going to be pretty expensive in
the short term. But once once you get it going,
it should be cheaper per bill to create these things, right,
(06:12):
And the idea behind that is, you know, you might say, well,
how is it cheaper per bill? And the thought is that, well,
these things are durable, they last longer than paper currency,
and paper currency you have to continuously replace. So you
may not be aware of this, but if you have
a paper bill and you use it, you actually go
out and you buy something with it, and someone else
(06:32):
goes out and buy something with it, and eventually those
bills make their ways to banks. And what happens is
when a bank gets bills, they look at the bills
and if the bills have reached a certain level of use,
if they're if they're basically about to disintegrate or otherwise
become um unusable or um, you probably don't want to
touch them. Then super gross, I think is the those
(06:56):
dollar bills or five dollars whatever, those notes get take
and out of circulation and replaced with brand new, fresh notes.
So when you hear about things like you know, a
treasury department printing up currency those bills, that doesn't represent
new wealth, right, that's not new as and that's not
adding wealth to the nation. What that's doing is that's
(07:19):
replacing old bills that were in circulation. The way you
create wealth is not by printing more money, because it's
as many countries have actually found in the past, and
and and sometimes people are printing money in order to
increase the wealth. And there were huge quote marks around
that phase in case you couldn't hear them, because that
is not that that's called inflation. And that's different exactly exactly.
(07:41):
If you end up just printing currency and then dumping
it into an economy, you really devalue the currency. So
suddenly now everything costs more because the currency isn't worth
as much, it doesn't have as much buying power. So
when they're printing up these these these bills, it's really
to replace the ones that are already in circulation that
need to be replace. That's the main reason. The way
you create wealth, by the way, in case you are wondering,
(08:03):
is through loans. You loan out money and you add interest.
That interest represents new wealth. That's kind of how in
a very high level, like all the economics majors out
there are just like he is oversimplifying this to the
point of ridiculousness, but that's basically how you create new wealth.
Economics has never made a lick of sense to me,
like like like nanoparticles, sure totally back for economics, no idea,
(08:27):
exactly totally, but but at any rate, um So, these
polymer notes, in addition to being slightly less expensive to
manufacture and and more durable, so therefore you know able
to be kept in circulation longer, have a lot of
good benefits when it comes to anti counterfeiting measures. Right,
So let's talk about some anti counterfeiting measures. These are
ones that some of them you can find on on
(08:50):
paper currency, but it's important to run down the list
of it because a lot of the same techniques that
are used in paper currency are being used in polymer
currency as well. So some of these you're gonna hear
and you're gonna think well, how is that special e polymer?
Not all of them are so one of them, uh,
and it's pretty simple. One is just the idea of
creating things that are really finely detailed, like really really
(09:16):
tign elements and parts of the image. Um. I mean,
that's that's why you'll see a lot of very fine
line work in many of the images. It's not just
like a big cartoony looking thing, right, And they'll be
like little curly cues and swirls and stuff and the
various designs that are on the bill. And the idea
here is that if you make those those details really precise,
(09:36):
it's difficult to copy that, right. It's difficult for a
counterfeiter to make a fake bill that has that same
level of detail in it, especially if you were let's
say that you have a copy machine that doesn't have
any sort of protection on it where you're able to
make copies of stuff. The more fine detail you include
on there, the harder it is for that copy machine
to reproduce it accurately. And so the hope for people
(10:00):
who are making the bills is that anyone who accepts
the bill will look at it and be able to
tell just by glancing at it, whether or not those
fine details match up against the real thing, or if
it's fakey fake. Okay, but even even fine detail can
be duplicated. I mean, I mean, I'm sure that some
of you are thinking, like, well, we I have like
a really high res scanner, and that could clearly duplicate.
(10:21):
And and you know, if I have a good enough printer,
then I could absolutely make a copy of that thing. Sure,
but there's there's a specific ink line process. Yeah, so
intaglio printing, right, yes, it gets all. When I read intaglio,
I think like that sounds like a cologne to me
or something Intaglio. So what this is is that you
(10:42):
are right. You take like a roller, okay, the roller
is essentially like a stamp, okay, And you make fine
etchings in the rollers, so these are little indentations inside
the roller. You then coat the roller with inc. Now
more inc is going to go into those indentations, because
they're like little wells. Sure, and then you wipe the
ink off the roller, which does not surface exactly, just
(11:04):
into the etchings exactly. And then you can put a
piece of paper or whatever whatever you're printing on and
it will then just those little fine details that have
been etched into the roller will be transferred to whatever
you're printing on. And that's a way of creating this
incredibly finely detailed work so that you do it accurately
over and over every single time. It's going to come
out exactly the way you want it to because it's
(11:27):
etched into whatever the printing mechanism is right, and it
will also create a design that is raised up off
of the paper very slightly, paper whatever other exactly. So again,
both of those things are indications that you've got the
real legit currency in your hands. But there are a
lot of other anti counterfeiting measures as well, including things
(11:47):
like um multicolor bills. So the idea here is that
you don't use just a single dye in the dying
of your currency, so that you have maybe a gradation
or a couple of different colors on each bill, because
that is also difficult to replicate. So if you know,
I remember when I think it was, I guess it
(12:09):
was the hundred dollar bill several years ago. Now, when
it when it was redone, it had kind of a
peach coloring to it besides the green. Yeah, yeah, like
a pinkish peach ish and and everyone's immediate reaction was
this looks like monopoly money. It was actually a very
clever way of cheaply integrating better security exactly. So yeah,
for a lot of us were suddenly thinking, like, why
(12:30):
why do we have play money? It's sort of the
arrogant American approach to whenever we go to a foreign country.
You know, it's not that every American does this, but
I'm sure anyone living in another country has had the
experience or at least has heard a story of American
tourists calling calling American currency quote unquote real money, and
(12:51):
then referring to whatever the local currency is as the
stuff that I have to use to buy things. I
don't mean to break the polymer chain, but we need
to take a break and listen to a couple of
messages from our sponsors. On behalf of all Americans, I
(13:13):
would like to extend an apology to you. Not all
of us are like that. Uh No, some of us
are much more subtly completely ignorant about your money. I
I still feel a little bit bad I had the
last time I was over in England. I had this
really hilarious experience with a shopkeeper where I just I
felt like Arthur Weasley holding this pile of British coins
and and like she was just trying to she she
(13:34):
was like, you know, there will be a pound five,
and I was like, how does it? I just held
my hands up to her, like how you you take?
How much money? It is? The really sad part about
that story, Lauren, is you're not old enough to have
been around back when the when the English currency system
was not based off of base ten. When I was like,
all right, I'm sorry, it's sixteen pennies to a furlong,
(13:56):
which is uh as fourteen furlongs to a half any
crown thing. Obviously my ignorance of the English monetary system
is also great, but yes, at any rate, I have
also had that same experience, so that those multicolor bills
obviously another step toward creating an anti counterfeiting strategy, but
it's not the only one. Again, there's also incorporating strips
(14:19):
of different colored material within a banknote itself. So in
this case you might have a completely different material than
what makes up the bulk of the bank note. The
bank note itself may be made out of some sort
of paper slash cloth type stuff with these other strips
incorporated into them. Again, very difficult to counterfeit. You know,
(14:40):
there's just really it's just about raising the difficulty so
that your average person can't really counterfeit this money. It
doesn't mean that it's impossible. It just means that you've
raised the difficulty so much that the people who are
attempting it, that number gets smaller and smaller because it's
hard to do. Another strategy is to use holy grams. Yeah.
(15:02):
So holograms are obviously these little bit pictures that can uh,
they have a different you know, they shine in a
different way when you shine light on You also get
kind of a three D effect on them. You know,
it looks like you're looking at a three dimensional picture
as opposed to just a flat image. And these are
of course created with my favorite technology of all time, lasers. Yes,
(15:22):
we did an entire suite of episodes about holograms over
and Forward Thinking a few months back. I failed to
look up when exactly that occurred, but but go to
the Forward Thinking website, Yeah thinking dot com. Please do
I mean the the episodes we did on holograms, We
actually explain how people make holograms and it does involve
using two different types of lasers in order to complete this.
(15:45):
You know, it's actually kind of crazy to think how
complicated is just to make us what what appears to
be a simple image. But at any rate, again holograms,
it requires you to have some equipment that your average
counterfeiter probably doesn't have access to, I like really expensive lasers.
So then we've got including strips of phosphorescent material. So
then you've got you know, if you shine it underneath
(16:07):
like a black light and ultraviolet light, then you might
see that it glows. If it's a true bill obviously
that where a counterfeit and it doesn't glow, you'd say, huh, nice,
try now I'm calling the cops, all right. And there's
also all kinds of different inks that you can use
that are slightly harder to duplicate. Yes, yeah, including ink
that will change color depending upon the angle at which
(16:29):
light hits that ink. Right. This is due to a
process called uh iridescence. It's a physical process which works
by virtue of of micro structures, which are basically tiny
holes that reflect light at different angles and wavelengths than
the rest of the surrounding material. Yeah, this actually reminds
me a lot of how uh glass is free three
(16:50):
D works, and that you have these little tiny elements
inside a screen that direct light in specific ways, so
that one eye gets one set of light and the
other eye gets the other set of light, and that's
what creates the three D effect. Kind of similar here,
except instead of trying to direct light at your at
each eye independently, it's just changing that angle so that
you get a different color experience as you're as you're
(17:10):
moving the bill in relation to wherever the light sources. Sure,
it can even be used to create this multicolor look
without any ink at all. It can be a purely
physical structure. Yep, yep. Uh. Then there's also using ultraviolet
reactive fluorescent inks are metallic inks, again, stuff that's not
easy to come by, so again cutting down the likelihood
(17:33):
of counterfeiting. Uh. There's also micro printing that's kind of
similar to the etching we talked about before. This is
where you're printing really really super tiny words or numbers
as a way of again foiling the efforts of people
to copy an image directly, right, because not everyone has
access to that kind of high definition printing yep. And
then there's also designing software that actually recognizes when you
(17:56):
are trying to manipulate some sort of banknote. Now, the
software could be anything from a scanner to a copier
to any kind of photoshops sort of material where once
it recognizes the elements of a bank note, essentially refuses
to help you out. You'll end up getting either an
error or if you're trying to copy something, you might
(18:17):
just get a solid block where there's no definition at all.
It's it's you know, kind of uh, you know, it's
another level of security that's outside the bill itself. This
is more on the end of the people who are
making these software and hardware all right, right, you would
have to depend upon those developers to create that for
you or to create it in conjunction with you. And
(18:38):
a big example of this is your RYE on Constellation.
So this can recognize a scan bank note based on
the patterns that are actually on these banknotes themselves. These
have been put there by the various industries that create
the banknotes. If those marks are present on any kind
of image, like even if you included those marks on
(18:58):
some other form of image, this thing's gonna pick it
up and say all right, I can't work with this,
and uh, it's not likely that you're going to have
these specifically put on another image because they're tiny. They
look like little one millimeter sized circles, and they're usually
printed in yellow ink, so you're probably not going to
find it on anything else by accident. It's probably not.
It's it's not like it's working off of facial recognition
(19:20):
of Jeffer Center something exactly. That would be poor. Now that, yeah,
that would not work out so well. So then there's
also just using a material that's not just paper, right,
because paper is not very sturdy and it's also really
easy to reproduce, so most countries, including the United States,
use some other material. It's something that's closer to cloth
(19:41):
than it is in paper. Linen, in fact, is one
of the most popular additives yep, and in the United
States it's a mixture cotton and linen fibers, so it's
not really paper in the way we normally think of paper,
which is why a bill can survive a run through
the washing machine. Yep. Yeah, if you want to do
some money laundering. Sorry, I didn't really like that joke either,
(20:03):
but I'm gonna keep it anyway. Also, the United States
government says that it takes four thousand double folds as
then you're you're folding it forward and backward against itself
before a bill will tear, you know, brand new bill
will tear. And also because of this mixture, that's also
difficult to replicate. However, Uh, that doesn't mean people don't try.
(20:25):
So what do you do to try and detect a
counterfeit bill? One of the popular methods that is, Uh,
I've seen it used, like I've I've paid for something
with like a fresh twenty dollar bill and seeing people
use these things, these counterfeiting pins. The pen is meant
to try and detect the counterfeit bill. It usually has
some sort of chemical in it, like iodine, and that
(20:49):
would react to starch. And if it reacts to starch,
then will it'll actually stain whatever it is it's marking
against start of course being a common ingredient in many papers,
but something that you currency does not contain. Right, So
the idea would be if you marked, if you use
this marker on a legitimate bill, there should be no stain.
If used it on something that had a paper that
(21:10):
had start in it, it would stain which sounds like
it be pretty effective, except for the fact that there
are a lot of ways of removing starches from paper
or actually just buying starch free paper, and in either
case those pens would not be effective, So you could
have a fake bill. In fact, you could just cut
out a sheet of paper on starch free paper and
just write this is money on it and handed to
(21:32):
someone and if they ran the little marker on it,
there would be no stain. It clearly would not be
a real bill, right right, unless you're using a doctor
Who's psychic paper, not doctor who. That's terrible d doctor right, Oh,
I feel like a bad NERD. It's Mr Who. No,
I'm sorry, Yeah, I do it all the time at
at any rate, if you if you want to hear
(21:54):
a little bit more about all of these anti counterfeiting measures.
Jonathan and Christen episode called the Tech of Making Monny
way back on August nine, and they go into coins
as well, if you're curious about how all of this
currency is created. Yeah, I remember we talked about milling.
You know, was shortly after they invented money, so it
was a pretty fresh podcast back then. I was not
(22:15):
even born yet. Yeah, I mean you know, it was
it was It was odd because we had no way
of recording podcast. It was just us talking in a room.
But somehow someone just wrote it all down and managed
to recreate it. But despite all those measures, there are
times when counterfeiters still find ways to pass fake bills
into circulation, and so that is why are one of
(22:35):
the big reasons why countries are starting to switch over
to this polymer currency, which has not only all the
benefits of the counterfeiting anti counterfeiting measures we just talked about,
but has more on top of them. We'll be back
with more about polymers in just a moment, but we
need to take another quick break, all right, So let's
(23:02):
talk about actual polymer currency. What makes it so special
other than the fact that it's made out of plastic. Well,
in order to talk about this, let's talk about exactly
how this currency is made out of plastics. Oh, you know,
that's a good idea, all right. So you get a
polymer substrate, which is really just a fancy way of
saying a whole big flat sheet of this this stuff.
(23:23):
It's transparent, so you've got, you know, just imagine a
big transparent amount of plastic. It essentially looks the way
that any transparent part on a bank note would look. Uh.
And at this point you can then treat it chemically.
You would probably use some form of white ish ink
to make it opaque. You might treat certain areas of
(23:46):
that substrate chemically so that the white ink does not
adhere to it. That would mean that those sections would
remain transparent, which is one of the coolest things I
think about polymer currency when you can hold up the
bill and see cleanly through it, not because there's a
hole in it, which is the way most of my
money looks, or because of a water mark. I mean
some paper currency does include a water mark, which is
(24:07):
a thinner bit of the paper that light can shine
through more readily. Yeah, that would be kind of translucent.
You can actually have fully transparent sections of a polymer
bank note. So you would then treat it with this
chemical you'd wash all that off, and you would end
up with a mostly opaque, big old sheet of this
stuff stuff. Then you would cut it into the actual
(24:28):
sheet sizes you would use to feed through the printer.
You would then run it through a printer that would
end up applying some of the same techniques we talked
about in the previous section, including intaglio etching and all
that kind of good stuff in different kinds of banks exactly.
And then you end up with these sheets of polymer banknotes,
which you of course obviously have to cut up into
(24:49):
the right sizes. I mean, you could hand somebody just
a full sheet of you know, twenty dollar bank notes,
and they'd probably be like, this is awesome, where are
the scissors? But you know, you typically would cut those ups.
They'd be easier to distribute. It sounds like several board
game experiences I've had, um, but you can they do.
Further more, protect the sheets with with a varnish to
(25:10):
keep the ink in play. That's true, and that's really
important because, as we'll talk about, the ink on these
polymer bank notes was an early challenge, uh in the
for for countries that were attempting to make this move
earlier than others. Right in the early es, a bunch
of different places, we're looking into the technology, right and uh,
what what the you know, you had all these different
(25:32):
government officials that were looking at the possibility of using
a polymer to switch over to as the basis for
their their actual physical currency and they started looking around
at the different products that were available in the market.
No one was actually building a polymer out from the
ground up for this. They were trying to see what
else was available. DuPont had a product called taivek, the
(25:54):
generic name for that being polyethylene, and this was you know,
this look like it could be a potential candidate for
polymer currency. So it's used in lots of other stuff too.
It's not just for polymer currency. It wasn't developed specifically
to be polymer currency, was just one of the use
cases for it. And technically Haiti was the first country
(26:15):
to issue a polymer bank note, and this was way
back in nineteen eighty, but the country didn't stick with
polymer currency and in fact would switch back to paper
because inc did not stick to the currency. Yeah. There
was some smudging issues, which you don't really want in
your official, you know, government sanctioned currency. Right. There were
also problems with the bills being too fragile. They would
(26:37):
break instead of instead of folding. Yeah. So this was
again early early on in the experiments with polymer currency,
so no one had really hit upon the exact kind
of plastic that would be ideal for this. Use. Uh
Haiti was not the only country to experiment with this
early on. Costa Rica also issued a polymer bank note
made out of tai vek. In nineteen eighty three, they
(26:57):
also switched back to paper, although they currently used a
mixture of both paper and polymer currency, they're just not
using the tivek polymer anymore. Then you had the Isle
of Man, which you know, I keep forgetting is not
actually under the governance of the United Kingdom, because I
think of the Isle of Man as you know, it's
right there there. I mean, it might as well be.
(27:19):
But but no, no, it's God's own money. And the
Isle of Man ended up using ti vek. But it
wasn't called taivek. It was rebranded as brad vec because
it was being printed by a company called Bradbury Wilkinson.
Same stuff, just rebranded, so it still came from DuPont,
it wasn't it wasn't made by Bradbury Wilkinson. And it's
(27:40):
still polyethylene. It's still polyethylene exactly same stuff. And that
was produced in nine three. And the Isle of Man
also abandoned polymer currency after a short while and they
used paper. Now. The first Australian polymer notes had had
similar problems. The the original, which was a ten dollar
by centennial note, was in fact taken out circulation. So
(28:01):
you know, obviously these these early attempts met with let's say,
mixed success. It's not that they were it's not that
it was a bad idea. It's just that they hadn't
hit upon the right material for it to really work
and to for it to truly be a durable physical currency,
because if you're going to try and replace your paper currency,
you want this stuff to be able to last at
(28:22):
least as long as the paper equivalent, if not longer, right,
hopefully longer, so that you're not you're not wasting a
whole lot of time and money trying to create this
new new things only as good as the old thing.
Australia did kind of lead the way once they worked
out what kind of material they wanted to use, and
polypropylene is has become the popular choice and it's used
(28:46):
in other stuff too. Write it's not just in in
uh polymer currency, right, it's like a textiles that are
based on plastic carpets, upholstery, like thermal clothing, ropes. It's
it's what all that stuff is made out of. I mean,
it's also very multifunctional. It's not just using used in
these fibrous kind of applications. It can also be used
(29:06):
for lots of medical and lab equipment like a petri
dishes or disposable syringes. So this is you know, obviously
again it's one of those things where this has a
lot of different utility and they thought, hey, why don't
we make our money out of this stuff except in
an Australian accent, which, for your benefit, I shall not
attempt excellent. But you know, this meant that they had
a lot of other options that you wouldn't necessarily have
(29:29):
with paper currency, including that that I was talking about before,
where you turn most of the bank note opaque but
leave a transparent window. Yeah. Again, this makes it really
really hard for counterfeiters to replicate. You know, you'd have
to be very precise in the way you aligned your
actual I mean, by the time you go through the
(29:50):
whole process of making something that would allow you to
design this, you've probably spent more money than you could
possibly replicate, you know. Yeah, yeah, and that that a
touch and feel of this polymer currency is very distinct,
so it's a lot more difficult to to get that
kind of thing into practice than it would be equivalent paper, right, right,
And then uh, you know, they also were able to
(30:13):
feature that raised lettering we talked about, like embossing stuff
on on this plastic, which actually adheres better to plastic
than it would on just a regular paper bill. Right,
paper can flatten out again after after circulation. Um, you
can you can also print designs on top of that
transparent window, so you can have little little blocks of
of opaque bits inside the window which just layers upon layers,
(30:37):
and or you could have transparent bits within opaque bits,
so you can have an area where you know, in
a design there might be shades that are slightly lighter
than the surrounding area, and if you hold it up
to the light, suddenly you can read stuff like numbers usually,
And that is another great thing to put in there,
because again very difficult to replicate. Uh. And as we
(31:00):
said earlier in the episode, a lot of the other
reasons besides this this whole um anti counterfeiting approach are
things like the fact that this money is more durable. Now,
how much more durable is it um depends It depends
on who you ask and exactly what kind of thing
they're talking about. Both the Bank of Canada and the
Bank of England have said that their their bills are
(31:22):
or I mean, in the case of England, are are
slated to last about two point five times as long
as their paper currency, right. And then you've got the
Reserve Bank of Australia. They they they go a little
further right, four times as long. I've I've I've read
estimates that they're up to ten times as durable. But
(31:43):
that doesn't necessary. I mean, all of these are are
you know, kind of squiggly precise estimate numbers. And you
can fold this stuff. You know, it's not like it's
solid plastic. It's not like a credit card where you know,
it's it's stuck in this form factor so that everyone
would have to have these very long billful You could
actually fold this like you could paper money, yeah, into
a standard wallet. Yeah. So anyway, if you're wondering, hey,
(32:07):
how does that stack up against the lifespan of say
an average dollar, Well, I'm going to take just a
quick tangent here to to say something that I think
is pretty amusing. See here in the United States, We've
got several different official organizations that have a lot to
do with money, including the Federal Reserve and the U. S. Treasury,
and these different agencies give extremely varied accounts of how
(32:29):
long the average lifespan is for every denomination of bill.
So depends upon whom you ask. I mean, you know,
one might say a dollar bill has a two year
life expectancy and that's it. Another would say six years,
another would say six months. Does anyone agree on this?
Are you talking to each other at all? Yeah? And
(32:51):
and so it really depends upon which authority you, uh,
you look at. And it's funny because I actually first
found out about that by listening to another pod HAST
called Skeptics Guide to the Universe, where someone had asked
them about the average life span of bills um and
so one of the members of the podcast group went
in to study this, and his response was, this was
(33:12):
probably the most frustrating research I've ever had to do
because I kept getting different answers depending upon where I went.
I tried to corroborate it, and I couldn't get any corroboration. So, uh,
something that is absolutely definite is that you can clean
polymer currency a lot better than you can paper currency. Okay,
So here's the thing, y'all. Paper currency passes through a
lot of hands. It's pretty gross. Yeah, and some of
(33:35):
those hands not the nicest hands. You know. It might
be people who are sick. It might be that the
money itself just comes to contact with other types of
contaminants like bacteria. Oh yeah, I mean, I mean people
store money and all kinds of non traditional places. It's
not all pristine wallets, yep, yep, I've got some some
(33:55):
different Like just thinking about the places where I found money,
where you know, between cushions of a couch. Who knows
how long it's been there. Anyway. The point being that
these dollar bills or or bank notes whatever can get
pretty grungy and nasty, and you can't really clean them
up without possibly damage them. Yeah, so if you're talking
(34:17):
about a polymer that's plastic, you can actually use a
damp cloth just wipe it off, Yeah, just wipe it down,
and then you've got a clean bill. So it could
actually mean that you end up reducing the chance of
spreading things like bacteria around at least a little bit.
I mean, it's not like it's going to eliminate it entirely,
but it takes away one more potential vector, right, certainly.
(34:40):
And also just you know, it's it's less stinky than
paper linen bills can get. But if you're if you're
wondering if I'm overreacting, I'm not. A two thousand two
report in the Southern Medical Journal showed that pathogens including
stephlo caucus, are on nine of all dollar bills that
they tested. So don't don't put money in your mouth, no, hope,
(35:03):
please don't, please do not do not do that. We
like you, we'd like you to continue being listeners of
tech stuff. Now, another argument for polymer bank notes, so
we mentioned this earlier too, is that they're actually greener
than paper bank notes, And it's not that the processes
to create them are greener, because generally, if you can
(35:24):
use a renewable resource, that's better than using a a
chemically created plastic resources, especially since you're talking about some
sort of probably some fossil fuel involved there, I mean,
petroleum based products are often part of this. Sure, although
I'm sure that there's there's fossil fuel use in paper money,
but at any rate, um, you know, agencies don't have
(35:44):
to create as much of the polymer currency to keep
the same amount in circulation because each of the bills
is going to last longer. Yeah, if you look at
this from a really big picture standpoint, and you know
it's crazy, but you have to step way back to
really see the big picture. You're walking not only about
replacing fewer bills into circulation because they're more durable so
(36:06):
they can last longer. They can they can remain in
circulation longer. That's one thing, which means you don't have
to make as much. That's that's important, but also means
you don't have to transport as much. You know, once
you make all those new bills, you have to ship
them to the various banks, and that requires energy, it
requires you know that, you know labor. So if you're
able to reduce all of that, you can have a
(36:27):
measurable effect at the end of the day. This is
another example of how something that on the surface seems pretty,
you know, cut and dry, once you start diving into it,
you realize, wow, everything really is connected. It's way more
complicated than I had first anticipated. So some nations have
found that they have more trouble with dealing with polymer
(36:48):
currency than they did with paper currency. Nigeria actually considered
abandoning polymer bank notes because they said that it was
difficult to process and that it was difficult to destroy
the old banknotes like once you were taking them out
of circulation. So they're they're so durable that they're running
into problems on the opposite end of how to like
how do you how do you do how do you
(37:09):
break them down? Especially how do you break them down
in a way that wouldn't be environmentally dangerous? Now if
you're able to recycle them in some way, like first
you have to destroy it. Now this is true with
paper currency too. There are there are various um explanations
of how this gets done. But essentially your paper currency
went taking out of circulation is obliterated. I mean it
(37:30):
has to be, because otherwise if it were to fall
back into circulation, then you have the danger of inflation. Right,
you suddenly have this issue of not being able to
control the money supply the currency. Really, so Nigeria said
that it was getting really hard to um destroy them properly,
and so it was something that was holding them back
from fully adopting a polymer currency based economy. Sure, Australia
(37:56):
does have a recycling program for their polymer currency. They're
they're made into like compost bins and plumbing parts after
they're too worn down to be used anymore, which interesting.
I'm there's so many jokes that I want to make
about your money going into turning into compost bins or
or plumbing, particularly the plumbing pipes. I think about all
(38:16):
the money I flushed down the drain over the years,
over one hair brained scheme after another. Those get rich
quick schemes, Man, they just never work out for me.
I gotta talk to my buddy Zach Morris about that
when I'm done. That wraps up this classic episode of
tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have
any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out
let me know. The best way to do that is
(38:37):
on Twitter. The handle we use is text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(39:00):
Eight
Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and it is time
for a classic episode. This episode originally published on February
(00:24):
two thousand fourteen. It is called It's all about the Polymers.
I don't, I don't even. I mean, I guess I
was going for and all about the Benjamin's thing there.
I don't. It was a long time ago. I don't
remember coming up with that title. But yes, we're gonna
talk about polymers today, long chain molecules. Let's get into it.
(00:47):
This is a topic that was sent to us by
one of our beloved listeners. Correct, Yes, this is listener
Matt via Twitter. I who said to us, in time
for Australia Day on Sunday, how about a podcast for
Australia's polymer money. And you know what Australia Day was
several Sundays ago. Yes, this is This is not an
up to date and current podcast, so we apologize for
(01:10):
not managing to put it out before the day. We're
just really early for next year, is the thing? Yeah,
See here's the thing. Uh, time happens earlier in Australia
than it does over here. And that's the reason. I
don't think that's the reason. Let's just I'm trying to
cover our tracks here, okay. So yeah, we wanted to
talk about polymer currency and what is it? Uh? And
(01:31):
why is it important? Why are so many other places
looking into it or have already adopted it at least
in some measure. Yeah, because Australia was that the first
country to adopt an entire line of polymer notes to
completely switch over their paper currency to polymer currency. And
that was back in six although they had started using
(01:52):
polymer notes way back, and other countries had had experimented
with it before, but no country had switched completely over
to polymer currency before Australia did it. Right, And now
more than twenty five other nations are are issuing some
polymer notes and and more adding themselves to the list
(02:12):
all the time. The UK, for example, has plans to
introduce both a five pound Winston Churchill note and a
ten pound Jane Austin notes starting in seen respectively. That's
pretty cool. And so yeah, we're looking at upwards of
a billion of these entering circulation right in three years
in the UK alone, right, Yeah, it's it's a pretty
(02:34):
big rollout. They're going to be withdrawing all of their
paper notes for those two current those two denominations, right right,
So that makes makes us wonder like, what's the big
deal here. So we're gonna set some some foundation before
we get into all the stuff about polymers, because you know,
it helps to actually understand bank notes in general, currency
in general before we jump into that. So a bank
(02:57):
note is just a unit of current currency. Most of
you out there probably very familiar with some sort of banknote.
Here in the United States, we talk about dollar bills,
five dollar bills, ten dollar bills, that kind of thing.
As you were saying, in the UK, it's the pound,
you know, in a lot of European nations it's the euro,
that sort of stuff. Well, it's this is the These
are the actual physical bills that represent certain amounts of value.
(03:17):
It represents a specific amount of value for a given
nation exactly. So yeah, five dollar bill in the United
States represents five dollars pretty straightforward when you get down
to it, Which is nice because as you've listen to
this podcast, you know some of the topics we cover
not so straightforward, right. Also, I'd like to apologize on
behalf of myself for for amount of value. That was
(03:40):
just a really spectacular phrasing. Oh, I get so redundantly
repetitive that I have to reiterate it occasionally. So at
any rate, we want to talk also about what a
polymer is. Now, a polymer is a type of molecule.
It's does not necessarily mean natural versus synthetic. That there
are actually both natural polymers and some etic polymers out there.
(04:01):
This is a specific classification of molecules. Now, a polymer
is made up of monomers. Not a big surprise there.
Polymer means the poly means many, right, and mono means one.
So a monomer is kind of like the base unit
of a polymer, which you end up being these long
chains of of molecules. They tend to be pretty resilient
(04:21):
and flexible, at least on the molecular level, depending upon uh,
what they're made out of. When you get it onto
the macro scale, they may be more or less flexible
in other materials. But if you're looking at natural polymers,
that includes stuff like silk or amber and synthetic polymers
include man made rubber. Natural rubber also a polymer, obviously
(04:43):
not a synthetic one, thus the word natural um. But
another synthetic polymer would be plastics. So uh, these have
turned out to be incredibly useful materials for all sorts
of industries, the technology industry in particular. I mean, are
electronics wouldn't be what they are without these kind of
plastic polymers, right. Plastics make it possible, yeah, because I mean,
(05:06):
otherwise we'd have to find some other material to make
everything out of and it would be all the prices
would go up. Plastics cheap, it's easy to produce. So
these are all really important elements that you want in
any kind of material. And so some people started thinking,
well maybe we could apply that to currency. So if
you look at it, we talked about what a bank
(05:26):
note does, we talked about what a polymer is, So
a polymer bank note is a banknote, mayor of Pombers Hey,
and we can end the podcast right here. Well we'll
keep going though, because you know me, I can't stop it.
Just like whatever. It is like three and a half minutes.
So we're looking at these type of synthetic materials, mainly
the plastics family, that to be used as a bank
(05:49):
note UH. Using plastic. According to all the authorities who
are issuing these polymer currency UH denominations, it's actually cheaper
than using paper in the long run. I mean, you know,
of course, the costs of setting up a program to
create these things, it's going to be pretty expensive in
the short term. But once once you get it going,
it should be cheaper per bill to create these things, right,
(06:12):
And the idea behind that is, you know, you might say, well,
how is it cheaper per bill? And the thought is that, well,
these things are durable, they last longer than paper currency,
and paper currency you have to continuously replace. So you
may not be aware of this, but if you have
a paper bill and you use it, you actually go
out and you buy something with it, and someone else
(06:32):
goes out and buy something with it, and eventually those
bills make their ways to banks. And what happens is
when a bank gets bills, they look at the bills
and if the bills have reached a certain level of use,
if they're if they're basically about to disintegrate or otherwise
become um unusable or um, you probably don't want to
touch them. Then super gross, I think is the those
(06:56):
dollar bills or five dollars whatever, those notes get take
and out of circulation and replaced with brand new, fresh notes.
So when you hear about things like you know, a
treasury department printing up currency those bills, that doesn't represent
new wealth, right, that's not new as and that's not
adding wealth to the nation. What that's doing is that's
(07:19):
replacing old bills that were in circulation. The way you
create wealth is not by printing more money, because it's
as many countries have actually found in the past, and
and and sometimes people are printing money in order to
increase the wealth. And there were huge quote marks around
that phase in case you couldn't hear them, because that
is not that that's called inflation. And that's different exactly exactly.
(07:41):
If you end up just printing currency and then dumping
it into an economy, you really devalue the currency. So
suddenly now everything costs more because the currency isn't worth
as much, it doesn't have as much buying power. So
when they're printing up these these these bills, it's really
to replace the ones that are already in circulation that
need to be replace. That's the main reason. The way
you create wealth, by the way, in case you are wondering,
(08:03):
is through loans. You loan out money and you add interest.
That interest represents new wealth. That's kind of how in
a very high level, like all the economics majors out
there are just like he is oversimplifying this to the
point of ridiculousness, but that's basically how you create new wealth.
Economics has never made a lick of sense to me,
like like like nanoparticles, sure totally back for economics, no idea,
(08:27):
exactly totally, but but at any rate, um So, these
polymer notes, in addition to being slightly less expensive to
manufacture and and more durable, so therefore you know able
to be kept in circulation longer, have a lot of
good benefits when it comes to anti counterfeiting measures. Right,
So let's talk about some anti counterfeiting measures. These are
ones that some of them you can find on on
(08:50):
paper currency, but it's important to run down the list
of it because a lot of the same techniques that
are used in paper currency are being used in polymer
currency as well. So some of these you're gonna hear
and you're gonna think well, how is that special e polymer?
Not all of them are so one of them, uh,
and it's pretty simple. One is just the idea of
creating things that are really finely detailed, like really really
(09:16):
tign elements and parts of the image. Um. I mean,
that's that's why you'll see a lot of very fine
line work in many of the images. It's not just
like a big cartoony looking thing, right, And they'll be
like little curly cues and swirls and stuff and the
various designs that are on the bill. And the idea
here is that if you make those those details really precise,
(09:36):
it's difficult to copy that, right. It's difficult for a
counterfeiter to make a fake bill that has that same
level of detail in it, especially if you were let's
say that you have a copy machine that doesn't have
any sort of protection on it where you're able to
make copies of stuff. The more fine detail you include
on there, the harder it is for that copy machine
to reproduce it accurately. And so the hope for people
(10:00):
who are making the bills is that anyone who accepts
the bill will look at it and be able to
tell just by glancing at it, whether or not those
fine details match up against the real thing, or if
it's fakey fake. Okay, but even even fine detail can
be duplicated. I mean, I mean, I'm sure that some
of you are thinking, like, well, we I have like
a really high res scanner, and that could clearly duplicate.
(10:21):
And and you know, if I have a good enough printer,
then I could absolutely make a copy of that thing. Sure,
but there's there's a specific ink line process. Yeah, so
intaglio printing, right, yes, it gets all. When I read intaglio,
I think like that sounds like a cologne to me
or something Intaglio. So what this is is that you
(10:42):
are right. You take like a roller, okay, the roller
is essentially like a stamp, okay, And you make fine
etchings in the rollers, so these are little indentations inside
the roller. You then coat the roller with inc. Now
more inc is going to go into those indentations, because
they're like little wells. Sure, and then you wipe the
ink off the roller, which does not surface exactly, just
(11:04):
into the etchings exactly. And then you can put a
piece of paper or whatever whatever you're printing on and
it will then just those little fine details that have
been etched into the roller will be transferred to whatever
you're printing on. And that's a way of creating this
incredibly finely detailed work so that you do it accurately
over and over every single time. It's going to come
out exactly the way you want it to because it's
(11:27):
etched into whatever the printing mechanism is right, and it
will also create a design that is raised up off
of the paper very slightly, paper whatever other exactly. So again,
both of those things are indications that you've got the
real legit currency in your hands. But there are a
lot of other anti counterfeiting measures as well, including things
(11:47):
like um multicolor bills. So the idea here is that
you don't use just a single dye in the dying
of your currency, so that you have maybe a gradation
or a couple of different colors on each bill, because
that is also difficult to replicate. So if you know,
I remember when I think it was, I guess it
(12:09):
was the hundred dollar bill several years ago. Now, when
it when it was redone, it had kind of a
peach coloring to it besides the green. Yeah, yeah, like
a pinkish peach ish and and everyone's immediate reaction was
this looks like monopoly money. It was actually a very
clever way of cheaply integrating better security exactly. So yeah,
for a lot of us were suddenly thinking, like, why
(12:30):
why do we have play money? It's sort of the
arrogant American approach to whenever we go to a foreign country.
You know, it's not that every American does this, but
I'm sure anyone living in another country has had the
experience or at least has heard a story of American
tourists calling calling American currency quote unquote real money, and
(12:51):
then referring to whatever the local currency is as the
stuff that I have to use to buy things. I
don't mean to break the polymer chain, but we need
to take a break and listen to a couple of
messages from our sponsors. On behalf of all Americans, I
(13:13):
would like to extend an apology to you. Not all
of us are like that. Uh No, some of us
are much more subtly completely ignorant about your money. I
I still feel a little bit bad I had the
last time I was over in England. I had this
really hilarious experience with a shopkeeper where I just I
felt like Arthur Weasley holding this pile of British coins
and and like she was just trying to she she
(13:34):
was like, you know, there will be a pound five,
and I was like, how does it? I just held
my hands up to her, like how you you take?
How much money? It is? The really sad part about
that story, Lauren, is you're not old enough to have
been around back when the when the English currency system
was not based off of base ten. When I was like,
all right, I'm sorry, it's sixteen pennies to a furlong,
(13:56):
which is uh as fourteen furlongs to a half any
crown thing. Obviously my ignorance of the English monetary system
is also great, but yes, at any rate, I have
also had that same experience, so that those multicolor bills
obviously another step toward creating an anti counterfeiting strategy, but
it's not the only one. Again, there's also incorporating strips
(14:19):
of different colored material within a banknote itself. So in
this case you might have a completely different material than
what makes up the bulk of the bank note. The
bank note itself may be made out of some sort
of paper slash cloth type stuff with these other strips
incorporated into them. Again, very difficult to counterfeit. You know,
(14:40):
there's just really it's just about raising the difficulty so
that your average person can't really counterfeit this money. It
doesn't mean that it's impossible. It just means that you've
raised the difficulty so much that the people who are
attempting it, that number gets smaller and smaller because it's
hard to do. Another strategy is to use holy grams. Yeah.
(15:02):
So holograms are obviously these little bit pictures that can uh,
they have a different you know, they shine in a
different way when you shine light on You also get
kind of a three D effect on them. You know,
it looks like you're looking at a three dimensional picture
as opposed to just a flat image. And these are
of course created with my favorite technology of all time, lasers. Yes,
(15:22):
we did an entire suite of episodes about holograms over
and Forward Thinking a few months back. I failed to
look up when exactly that occurred, but but go to
the Forward Thinking website, Yeah thinking dot com. Please do
I mean the the episodes we did on holograms, We
actually explain how people make holograms and it does involve
using two different types of lasers in order to complete this.
(15:45):
You know, it's actually kind of crazy to think how
complicated is just to make us what what appears to
be a simple image. But at any rate, again holograms,
it requires you to have some equipment that your average
counterfeiter probably doesn't have access to, I like really expensive lasers.
So then we've got including strips of phosphorescent material. So
then you've got you know, if you shine it underneath
(16:07):
like a black light and ultraviolet light, then you might
see that it glows. If it's a true bill obviously
that where a counterfeit and it doesn't glow, you'd say, huh, nice,
try now I'm calling the cops, all right. And there's
also all kinds of different inks that you can use
that are slightly harder to duplicate. Yes, yeah, including ink
that will change color depending upon the angle at which
(16:29):
light hits that ink. Right. This is due to a
process called uh iridescence. It's a physical process which works
by virtue of of micro structures, which are basically tiny
holes that reflect light at different angles and wavelengths than
the rest of the surrounding material. Yeah, this actually reminds
me a lot of how uh glass is free three
(16:50):
D works, and that you have these little tiny elements
inside a screen that direct light in specific ways, so
that one eye gets one set of light and the
other eye gets the other set of light, and that's
what creates the three D effect. Kind of similar here,
except instead of trying to direct light at your at
each eye independently, it's just changing that angle so that
you get a different color experience as you're as you're
(17:10):
moving the bill in relation to wherever the light sources. Sure,
it can even be used to create this multicolor look
without any ink at all. It can be a purely
physical structure. Yep, yep. Uh. Then there's also using ultraviolet
reactive fluorescent inks are metallic inks, again, stuff that's not
easy to come by, so again cutting down the likelihood
(17:33):
of counterfeiting. Uh. There's also micro printing that's kind of
similar to the etching we talked about before. This is
where you're printing really really super tiny words or numbers
as a way of again foiling the efforts of people
to copy an image directly, right, because not everyone has
access to that kind of high definition printing yep. And
then there's also designing software that actually recognizes when you
(17:56):
are trying to manipulate some sort of banknote. Now, the
software could be anything from a scanner to a copier
to any kind of photoshops sort of material where once
it recognizes the elements of a bank note, essentially refuses
to help you out. You'll end up getting either an
error or if you're trying to copy something, you might
(18:17):
just get a solid block where there's no definition at all.
It's it's you know, kind of uh, you know, it's
another level of security that's outside the bill itself. This
is more on the end of the people who are
making these software and hardware all right, right, you would
have to depend upon those developers to create that for
you or to create it in conjunction with you. And
(18:38):
a big example of this is your RYE on Constellation.
So this can recognize a scan bank note based on
the patterns that are actually on these banknotes themselves. These
have been put there by the various industries that create
the banknotes. If those marks are present on any kind
of image, like even if you included those marks on
(18:58):
some other form of image, this thing's gonna pick it
up and say all right, I can't work with this,
and uh, it's not likely that you're going to have
these specifically put on another image because they're tiny. They
look like little one millimeter sized circles, and they're usually
printed in yellow ink, so you're probably not going to
find it on anything else by accident. It's probably not.
It's it's not like it's working off of facial recognition
(19:20):
of Jeffer Center something exactly. That would be poor. Now that, yeah,
that would not work out so well. So then there's
also just using a material that's not just paper, right,
because paper is not very sturdy and it's also really
easy to reproduce, so most countries, including the United States,
use some other material. It's something that's closer to cloth
(19:41):
than it is in paper. Linen, in fact, is one
of the most popular additives yep, and in the United
States it's a mixture cotton and linen fibers, so it's
not really paper in the way we normally think of paper,
which is why a bill can survive a run through
the washing machine. Yep. Yeah, if you want to do
some money laundering. Sorry, I didn't really like that joke either,
(20:03):
but I'm gonna keep it anyway. Also, the United States
government says that it takes four thousand double folds as
then you're you're folding it forward and backward against itself
before a bill will tear, you know, brand new bill
will tear. And also because of this mixture, that's also
difficult to replicate. However, Uh, that doesn't mean people don't try.
(20:25):
So what do you do to try and detect a
counterfeit bill? One of the popular methods that is, Uh,
I've seen it used, like I've I've paid for something
with like a fresh twenty dollar bill and seeing people
use these things, these counterfeiting pins. The pen is meant
to try and detect the counterfeit bill. It usually has
some sort of chemical in it, like iodine, and that
(20:49):
would react to starch. And if it reacts to starch,
then will it'll actually stain whatever it is it's marking
against start of course being a common ingredient in many papers,
but something that you currency does not contain. Right, So
the idea would be if you marked, if you use
this marker on a legitimate bill, there should be no stain.
If used it on something that had a paper that
(21:10):
had start in it, it would stain which sounds like
it be pretty effective, except for the fact that there
are a lot of ways of removing starches from paper
or actually just buying starch free paper, and in either
case those pens would not be effective, So you could
have a fake bill. In fact, you could just cut
out a sheet of paper on starch free paper and
just write this is money on it and handed to
(21:32):
someone and if they ran the little marker on it,
there would be no stain. It clearly would not be
a real bill, right right, unless you're using a doctor
Who's psychic paper, not doctor who. That's terrible d doctor right, Oh,
I feel like a bad NERD. It's Mr Who. No,
I'm sorry, Yeah, I do it all the time at
at any rate, if you if you want to hear
(21:54):
a little bit more about all of these anti counterfeiting measures.
Jonathan and Christen episode called the Tech of Making Monny
way back on August nine, and they go into coins
as well, if you're curious about how all of this
currency is created. Yeah, I remember we talked about milling.
You know, was shortly after they invented money, so it
was a pretty fresh podcast back then. I was not
(22:15):
even born yet. Yeah, I mean you know, it was
it was It was odd because we had no way
of recording podcast. It was just us talking in a room.
But somehow someone just wrote it all down and managed
to recreate it. But despite all those measures, there are
times when counterfeiters still find ways to pass fake bills
into circulation, and so that is why are one of
(22:35):
the big reasons why countries are starting to switch over
to this polymer currency, which has not only all the
benefits of the counterfeiting anti counterfeiting measures we just talked about,
but has more on top of them. We'll be back
with more about polymers in just a moment, but we
need to take another quick break, all right, So let's
(23:02):
talk about actual polymer currency. What makes it so special
other than the fact that it's made out of plastic. Well,
in order to talk about this, let's talk about exactly
how this currency is made out of plastics. Oh, you know,
that's a good idea, all right. So you get a
polymer substrate, which is really just a fancy way of
saying a whole big flat sheet of this this stuff.
(23:23):
It's transparent, so you've got, you know, just imagine a
big transparent amount of plastic. It essentially looks the way
that any transparent part on a bank note would look. Uh.
And at this point you can then treat it chemically.
You would probably use some form of white ish ink
to make it opaque. You might treat certain areas of
(23:46):
that substrate chemically so that the white ink does not
adhere to it. That would mean that those sections would
remain transparent, which is one of the coolest things I
think about polymer currency when you can hold up the
bill and see cleanly through it, not because there's a
hole in it, which is the way most of my
money looks, or because of a water mark. I mean
some paper currency does include a water mark, which is
(24:07):
a thinner bit of the paper that light can shine
through more readily. Yeah, that would be kind of translucent.
You can actually have fully transparent sections of a polymer
bank note. So you would then treat it with this
chemical you'd wash all that off, and you would end
up with a mostly opaque, big old sheet of this
stuff stuff. Then you would cut it into the actual
(24:28):
sheet sizes you would use to feed through the printer.
You would then run it through a printer that would
end up applying some of the same techniques we talked
about in the previous section, including intaglio etching and all
that kind of good stuff in different kinds of banks exactly.
And then you end up with these sheets of polymer banknotes,
which you of course obviously have to cut up into
(24:49):
the right sizes. I mean, you could hand somebody just
a full sheet of you know, twenty dollar bank notes,
and they'd probably be like, this is awesome, where are
the scissors? But you know, you typically would cut those ups.
They'd be easier to distribute. It sounds like several board
game experiences I've had, um, but you can they do.
Further more, protect the sheets with with a varnish to
(25:10):
keep the ink in play. That's true, and that's really
important because, as we'll talk about, the ink on these
polymer bank notes was an early challenge, uh in the
for for countries that were attempting to make this move
earlier than others. Right in the early es, a bunch
of different places, we're looking into the technology, right and uh,
what what the you know, you had all these different
(25:32):
government officials that were looking at the possibility of using
a polymer to switch over to as the basis for
their their actual physical currency and they started looking around
at the different products that were available in the market.
No one was actually building a polymer out from the
ground up for this. They were trying to see what
else was available. DuPont had a product called taivek, the
(25:54):
generic name for that being polyethylene, and this was you know,
this look like it could be a potential candidate for
polymer currency. So it's used in lots of other stuff too.
It's not just for polymer currency. It wasn't developed specifically
to be polymer currency, was just one of the use
cases for it. And technically Haiti was the first country
(26:15):
to issue a polymer bank note, and this was way
back in nineteen eighty, but the country didn't stick with
polymer currency and in fact would switch back to paper
because inc did not stick to the currency. Yeah. There
was some smudging issues, which you don't really want in
your official, you know, government sanctioned currency. Right. There were
also problems with the bills being too fragile. They would
(26:37):
break instead of instead of folding. Yeah. So this was
again early early on in the experiments with polymer currency,
so no one had really hit upon the exact kind
of plastic that would be ideal for this. Use. Uh
Haiti was not the only country to experiment with this
early on. Costa Rica also issued a polymer bank note
made out of tai vek. In nineteen eighty three, they
(26:57):
also switched back to paper, although they currently used a
mixture of both paper and polymer currency, they're just not
using the tivek polymer anymore. Then you had the Isle
of Man, which you know, I keep forgetting is not
actually under the governance of the United Kingdom, because I
think of the Isle of Man as you know, it's
right there there. I mean, it might as well be.
(27:19):
But but no, no, it's God's own money. And the
Isle of Man ended up using ti vek. But it
wasn't called taivek. It was rebranded as brad vec because
it was being printed by a company called Bradbury Wilkinson.
Same stuff, just rebranded, so it still came from DuPont,
it wasn't it wasn't made by Bradbury Wilkinson. And it's
(27:40):
still polyethylene. It's still polyethylene exactly same stuff. And that
was produced in nine three. And the Isle of Man
also abandoned polymer currency after a short while and they
used paper. Now. The first Australian polymer notes had had
similar problems. The the original, which was a ten dollar
by centennial note, was in fact taken out circulation. So
(28:01):
you know, obviously these these early attempts met with let's say,
mixed success. It's not that they were it's not that
it was a bad idea. It's just that they hadn't
hit upon the right material for it to really work
and to for it to truly be a durable physical currency,
because if you're going to try and replace your paper currency,
you want this stuff to be able to last at
(28:22):
least as long as the paper equivalent, if not longer, right,
hopefully longer, so that you're not you're not wasting a
whole lot of time and money trying to create this
new new things only as good as the old thing.
Australia did kind of lead the way once they worked
out what kind of material they wanted to use, and
polypropylene is has become the popular choice and it's used
(28:46):
in other stuff too. Write it's not just in in
uh polymer currency, right, it's like a textiles that are
based on plastic carpets, upholstery, like thermal clothing, ropes. It's
it's what all that stuff is made out of. I mean,
it's also very multifunctional. It's not just using used in
these fibrous kind of applications. It can also be used
(29:06):
for lots of medical and lab equipment like a petri
dishes or disposable syringes. So this is you know, obviously
again it's one of those things where this has a
lot of different utility and they thought, hey, why don't
we make our money out of this stuff except in
an Australian accent, which, for your benefit, I shall not
attempt excellent. But you know, this meant that they had
a lot of other options that you wouldn't necessarily have
(29:29):
with paper currency, including that that I was talking about before,
where you turn most of the bank note opaque but
leave a transparent window. Yeah. Again, this makes it really
really hard for counterfeiters to replicate. You know, you'd have
to be very precise in the way you aligned your
actual I mean, by the time you go through the
(29:50):
whole process of making something that would allow you to
design this, you've probably spent more money than you could
possibly replicate, you know. Yeah, yeah, and that that a
touch and feel of this polymer currency is very distinct,
so it's a lot more difficult to to get that
kind of thing into practice than it would be equivalent paper, right, right,
And then uh, you know, they also were able to
(30:13):
feature that raised lettering we talked about, like embossing stuff
on on this plastic, which actually adheres better to plastic
than it would on just a regular paper bill. Right,
paper can flatten out again after after circulation. Um, you
can you can also print designs on top of that
transparent window, so you can have little little blocks of
of opaque bits inside the window which just layers upon layers,
(30:37):
and or you could have transparent bits within opaque bits,
so you can have an area where you know, in
a design there might be shades that are slightly lighter
than the surrounding area, and if you hold it up
to the light, suddenly you can read stuff like numbers usually,
And that is another great thing to put in there,
because again very difficult to replicate. Uh. And as we
(31:00):
said earlier in the episode, a lot of the other
reasons besides this this whole um anti counterfeiting approach are
things like the fact that this money is more durable. Now,
how much more durable is it um depends It depends
on who you ask and exactly what kind of thing
they're talking about. Both the Bank of Canada and the
Bank of England have said that their their bills are
(31:22):
or I mean, in the case of England, are are
slated to last about two point five times as long
as their paper currency, right. And then you've got the
Reserve Bank of Australia. They they they go a little
further right, four times as long. I've I've I've read
estimates that they're up to ten times as durable. But
(31:43):
that doesn't necessary. I mean, all of these are are
you know, kind of squiggly precise estimate numbers. And you
can fold this stuff. You know, it's not like it's
solid plastic. It's not like a credit card where you know,
it's it's stuck in this form factor so that everyone
would have to have these very long billful You could
actually fold this like you could paper money, yeah, into
a standard wallet. Yeah. So anyway, if you're wondering, hey,
(32:07):
how does that stack up against the lifespan of say
an average dollar, Well, I'm going to take just a
quick tangent here to to say something that I think
is pretty amusing. See here in the United States, We've
got several different official organizations that have a lot to
do with money, including the Federal Reserve and the U. S. Treasury,
and these different agencies give extremely varied accounts of how
(32:29):
long the average lifespan is for every denomination of bill.
So depends upon whom you ask. I mean, you know,
one might say a dollar bill has a two year
life expectancy and that's it. Another would say six years,
another would say six months. Does anyone agree on this?
Are you talking to each other at all? Yeah? And
(32:51):
and so it really depends upon which authority you, uh,
you look at. And it's funny because I actually first
found out about that by listening to another pod HAST
called Skeptics Guide to the Universe, where someone had asked
them about the average life span of bills um and
so one of the members of the podcast group went
in to study this, and his response was, this was
(33:12):
probably the most frustrating research I've ever had to do
because I kept getting different answers depending upon where I went.
I tried to corroborate it, and I couldn't get any corroboration. So, uh,
something that is absolutely definite is that you can clean
polymer currency a lot better than you can paper currency. Okay,
So here's the thing, y'all. Paper currency passes through a
lot of hands. It's pretty gross. Yeah, and some of
(33:35):
those hands not the nicest hands. You know. It might
be people who are sick. It might be that the
money itself just comes to contact with other types of
contaminants like bacteria. Oh yeah, I mean, I mean people
store money and all kinds of non traditional places. It's
not all pristine wallets, yep, yep, I've got some some
(33:55):
different Like just thinking about the places where I found money,
where you know, between cushions of a couch. Who knows
how long it's been there. Anyway. The point being that
these dollar bills or or bank notes whatever can get
pretty grungy and nasty, and you can't really clean them
up without possibly damage them. Yeah, so if you're talking
(34:17):
about a polymer that's plastic, you can actually use a
damp cloth just wipe it off, Yeah, just wipe it down,
and then you've got a clean bill. So it could
actually mean that you end up reducing the chance of
spreading things like bacteria around at least a little bit.
I mean, it's not like it's going to eliminate it entirely,
but it takes away one more potential vector, right, certainly.
(34:40):
And also just you know, it's it's less stinky than
paper linen bills can get. But if you're if you're
wondering if I'm overreacting, I'm not. A two thousand two
report in the Southern Medical Journal showed that pathogens including
stephlo caucus, are on nine of all dollar bills that
they tested. So don't don't put money in your mouth, no, hope,
(35:03):
please don't, please do not do not do that. We
like you, we'd like you to continue being listeners of
tech stuff. Now, another argument for polymer bank notes, so
we mentioned this earlier too, is that they're actually greener
than paper bank notes, And it's not that the processes
to create them are greener, because generally, if you can
(35:24):
use a renewable resource, that's better than using a a
chemically created plastic resources, especially since you're talking about some
sort of probably some fossil fuel involved there, I mean,
petroleum based products are often part of this. Sure, although
I'm sure that there's there's fossil fuel use in paper money,
but at any rate, um, you know, agencies don't have
(35:44):
to create as much of the polymer currency to keep
the same amount in circulation because each of the bills
is going to last longer. Yeah, if you look at
this from a really big picture standpoint, and you know
it's crazy, but you have to step way back to
really see the big picture. You're walking not only about
replacing fewer bills into circulation because they're more durable so
(36:06):
they can last longer. They can they can remain in
circulation longer. That's one thing, which means you don't have
to make as much. That's that's important, but also means
you don't have to transport as much. You know, once
you make all those new bills, you have to ship
them to the various banks, and that requires energy, it
requires you know that, you know labor. So if you're
able to reduce all of that, you can have a
(36:27):
measurable effect at the end of the day. This is
another example of how something that on the surface seems pretty,
you know, cut and dry, once you start diving into it,
you realize, wow, everything really is connected. It's way more
complicated than I had first anticipated. So some nations have
found that they have more trouble with dealing with polymer
(36:48):
currency than they did with paper currency. Nigeria actually considered
abandoning polymer bank notes because they said that it was
difficult to process and that it was difficult to destroy
the old banknotes like once you were taking them out
of circulation. So they're they're so durable that they're running
into problems on the opposite end of how to like
how do you how do you do how do you
(37:09):
break them down? Especially how do you break them down
in a way that wouldn't be environmentally dangerous? Now if
you're able to recycle them in some way, like first
you have to destroy it. Now this is true with
paper currency too. There are there are various um explanations
of how this gets done. But essentially your paper currency
went taking out of circulation is obliterated. I mean it
(37:30):
has to be, because otherwise if it were to fall
back into circulation, then you have the danger of inflation. Right,
you suddenly have this issue of not being able to
control the money supply the currency. Really, so Nigeria said
that it was getting really hard to um destroy them properly,
and so it was something that was holding them back
from fully adopting a polymer currency based economy. Sure, Australia
(37:56):
does have a recycling program for their polymer currency. They're
they're made into like compost bins and plumbing parts after
they're too worn down to be used anymore, which interesting.
I'm there's so many jokes that I want to make
about your money going into turning into compost bins or
or plumbing, particularly the plumbing pipes. I think about all
(38:16):
the money I flushed down the drain over the years,
over one hair brained scheme after another. Those get rich
quick schemes, Man, they just never work out for me.
I gotta talk to my buddy Zach Morris about that
when I'm done. That wraps up this classic episode of
tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have
any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out
let me know. The best way to do that is
(38:37):
on Twitter. The handle we use is text stuff hs
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(39:00):
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TechStuff News
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