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PAGE CONTENTS: Interesting Little Tidbits About Money
The Federal Reserve
Treasury Bills
Certificates of Deposit
Diamonds Gold The History of Money
Why
Roosevelt Is On the Dime Million Dollar
Bill (Counterfeit History) Credit Cards
More Credit Cards
Automatic Teller
Machines (ATMs)
Interesting Little Tidbits About Money
Secure,
relatively high-yielding stocks came to be called blue chips, a term taken from the game of
poker, where blue chips are more valuable than white or red chips.
The numbers '172' can be found on the
back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The ruby, sapphire, emerald, and aquamarine are not specific minerals.The ruby is the red and the sapphire is the blue variety
of corundum.An emerald is the green variety and an aquamarine is the blue varietyof beryl.
The first motto that
appeared on US coins was not, 'In God We Trust,' – it was 'Mind Your Business.'
These Copper cents were authorized on April 21, 1787.
100,000 Swiss francs or approximately $80,000 is
needed to open a Swiss bank account. Abraham Lincoln is the only US president facing right on an American
coin.
The term "hush money,"
meaning a bribe to keep someone form revealing scandalous or damaging information, was first used in the early 1700s.
The total amount of money in
a standard Monopoly game is $15,140.
If you had $10 billion in $1 bills and spent one every second, it would take 317 years to spend them all.
Greenbacks
No definite explanation can be made for the original choice; however, it is known that at the time of the introduction
of small-sized notes in 1929, green was continued because pigment was readily available in large quantities. Also, the color
was relatively high in its resistance to chemical and physical changes, and green was psychologically identified with the
strong and stable credit of the Government.
Where
did the dollar sign come from? An
Irish immigrant to the United States is the one credited with originating the dollar sign. Oliver Pollock sailed the high
seas at the age of twenty-three, and settled in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This young entrepreneur rapidly established himself
as a wealthy and influential West Indies trader. Pollock moved his operation
to Louisiana, where he amassed even more wealth as a trader, and as a plantation owner. His success enabled him to provide
supplies to the Patriots' cause in the Revolutionary War, and to maintain close contact and a degree of influence with
Congress. Pollock's success allowed him easily to purchase military supplies to support "the cause," as the
Spanish Empire had an outpost in New Orleans, Louisiana. In his dealings with the Spaniards, Pollock used their currency,
the peso.
In true Spanish tradition, Pollock used an abbreviation for pesos,
yet his penmanship made the abbreviation appear to be the transposition of the letters "p" and "s."
Prior to 1775, the fledgling nations monetary system was in disarray, and needed to be revamped.
By 1775, Congress decided to rectify the situation by backing all of its legal tender with the most commonly
circulated coins that were, coincidentally, Spanish coins minted in the New World. Americans then began trading with
"Spanish milled dollars," later termed "dollars," as Americans shed the "pounds" that were the
vestiges of British rule.
Congressman Robert Morris, to whom Pollock addressed his billing
records, perpetuated the use of the dollar sign, and was the first high government official to give his blessing to the "s"
with the two lines through it.
The appearance of the dollar sign in print, in a 1797 book by Chauncey
Lee, signified the acceptance of the dollar as a purely American symbol, much as is the bald eagle. And, no, the dollar sign
formed by placing the letter "U" over the letter "S" is not an abbreviation for Uncle Sam, as some have
suggested!
In 1915, the average annual family income in the United States
was $687 a year. Comparably, the $40-$60k made by the average family today would be a king's ransom! One hundred
years ago (from 2002), the salary for the average U.S. worker was between $200 and $400 per year. The euro is equal
to about 90 cents U.S.
Martha Washington, Pocahontas, and Susan B. Anthony are the only
3 women to have been represented on US currency.
In 1897 the federal government
of the U.S. recalled $26 million dollars worth of one hundred-dollar bills when a counterfeit bill appeared that was so accurate
it almost couldn't be distinguished from the real thing. This was the only time in history that fake money was so well
desgined that legitimate currency had to be withdrawn.
A stack of one-dollar
bills one mile high would be worth more than $14,000,000. If you stacked one million
$1 dollar bills, the pile of money would weigh 2,040.8 pounds. If you used $100 dollar bills, the stack would weigh only 20.4
pounds.
A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into
a sheet the size of a tennis court.
When was money first used?
If
money is a physical object traded as standard tokens of value, then the first money was being used by 9,000 BC in the middle
east and Africa, where cattle and measures of grain were exchanged as standard units for other items like food, raw materials,
land, or wives. Among the first objects specially created as value tokens were coils of cast silver "ring money"
that were used in Mesopotamia as early as 2,500 BC. These bits of silver were weighed in shekels, the world's first standard
units of measure. The first coins were circulated in Lydia in 687 BC, according to Herodotus. Although the Chinese may
have used paper money for a short time in the same century, the first western use of paper money was not until the 18th century,
by the French.
COINS
When were the earliest coins minted?
We think
a long, long time ago - In 625 B.C., metal coins were introduced in Greece. They replaced grain - usually barley - as the
medium of exchange. Stamped with a likeness of an ear of wheat, the new coins were lighter and easier to transport than grain,
and did not get moldy. United States dimes, quarters, and half dollars have notches all
around their edges, but pennies and nickels have no notches. Notches are a remnant from days when the value of
a coin was determined by the amount of silver or gold it contained. The US mint incorporated the notches as a way of discouraging
people from shaving off small amounts of the precious metals from their coins. Less valuable coins have always contained only
cheaper metals, and so their smooth edges were allowed to remain. Although coins today no longer contain silver, the
notches have been kept as part of their design, and are useful for recognition by the visually impaired.
What
was the first official U.S. coin?
The first U.S. coin was the Fugio copper penny. It was minted in 1787 to
help deal with the problem of underweight or counterfeit copper pennies circulating at the time. By minting a national coin,
a standard could be established.
The
coins bore a sun and sundial on the front, with the inscription "FUGIO" (I fly) and "MIND YOUR BUSINESS."
On the back were thirteen linked rings with the words "WE ARE ONE" and "UNITED STATES." Benjamin Franklin
designed the coin. Unfortunately, the Fugio cent had a troubled birth. The contractor who had agreed to press the coins
used much of the copper for another coinage, and eventually fled to Europe to avoid prosecution by the U.S. government. Only
a few thousand Fugios were ever made, and it is uncertain if any were ever put into circulation.
WHAT
WAS THE FIRST U.S. COIN TO MINTED WITH THE MOTTO "IN GOD WE TRUST?
The U.S. two-cent coin was minted between
1864 and 1873, and was the first coin to bear the motto "In God We Trust". The motto was omitted from the new gold
coins issued in 1907, causing a storm of public criticism. As a result, legislation passed in May, 1908 made "In God
We Trust" mandatory on all coins on which it had previously appeared. Legislation approved July 11, 1955, made the appearance
of "In God We Trust" mandatory on all coins and paper currency of the United States. By Act of July 30, 1956,
"In God We Trust" became the national motto of the United States.
Pennies The
Penny is the only coin currently minted in the United States with a profile that faces to the right. All other coins - the
silver dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, and nickel - all feature profiles that face to the left. Of course, Sacajewea's
face on the dollar coin isn't in profile at all!
How
is a penny different from other coins?
Other than its color, the Penny is the only coin currently minted in
the United States with a profile that faces to the right. All other coins the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime, and
nickel all feature profiles that face to the left.
When
did the U.S. mint its first pennies?
The U.S. Mint was authorized to produce one-cent copper coins on April
2, 1792. Originally, there were four designs struck: the "chain" cent, the "wreathed" cent, the "flowing
hair" cent, and the "liberty" cent.
Dimes
Before 1933, the dime was legal as payment only in transactions of $10 or less. In that year, Congress made the
dime legal tender for all transactions.
A
dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
WHAT PERCENT OF A NEWLY MINTED DIME IS SILVER?
No percent. As of 1965, the U.S. Mint stopped using silver to make dimes. They contain 75% copper and 25% nickel, bonded
to an inner core of pure copper. Previously, dimes were 90% silver and 10% copper.
Early
U. S. Coins
"In God We Trust" was first used on coins during the Civil
War. This inscription was added to the two-cent piece of 1864. But it didn't become
necessary to add it to all coins until 1955. The inscription "E Pluribus Unum," which means "One from Many"
(as in one country made from many states) was first used on the gold $5 piece of 1795.
The first U.S. commemorative coin
was produced in 1892 for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It featured Christopher Columbus, the man then credited with discovering the "New World." In 2000,
another commemorative coin was produced to honor Leif Ericson, whom we now know reached the
shores of the New World almost 500 years before Columbus.
Calvin Coolidge was the
first President to have his portrait appear on a coin struck during his lifetime. The historic image was on the obverse of
the 1926 Sesquicentennial of American Independence. The first
coin to feature an African-American was the Booker T. Washington Memorial Half Dollar. It was minted from 1946 to 1951. A
National Monument was designated to Washington in Hardy, Virginia,
on April 5, 1956.
The dollar, half-dollar, quarter, and 10-cent (dime) denominations were originally produced from
precious metals (gold and silver). The reeded edges were created to make sure no one would
alter the coins and try to file off the edges to retrieve some of the precious metals.
Mint marks show what minting
facility your coins came from — "P" for Philadelphia, "D" for Denver,
and "S" for San Francisco. This mark can be found to the right
of the subject's face on the obverse side of each circulating coin - with the exception of the "Philadelphia"
Lincoln cent, which has no mint mark. Copyright 2009 by NextEra Media.
All rights reserved. Feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
PAPER MONEY
WHERE WAS THE WORLD'S FIRST PAPER MONEY
USED?
In China in the ninth century. It was introduced due to a scarcity of the copper used for coins. Can someone carry one million dollars around in their wallet?
Only if it's their credit limit or
they were carrying very large denominations - If you stacked one million $1 dollar bills, the pile of money would weigh 2,040.8
pounds. If you used $100 dollar bills, the stack would weigh only 20.4 pounds.
How
does a bill-changing machine determine that your bill isn't counterfeit?
In passing judgment, the machine
checks for several characteristics. For instance, by passing a light through it, the changer examines your bill's gross
density (my Junior High School gym teacher would have scored high). It also uses light rays to check the alignment of thin
lines embedded in your bill. A magnet generates a signal from the ink in your bill and it had better match the one characteristic
of the ink used in printing real bills. The machine also measures the exact length of your bill. It's a good thing the
bill changer doesn't also measure the sweat on my palms while I await it's verdict. After 30 seconds I'll sign
any confession it prints out. Source: HOW DO THEY DO THAT? By Caroline Sutton
U. S. Paper Currency
Which
denominations were the first paper currency?
The first paper notes printed in the United States were in denominations
of 1 cent, 5 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The U.S. Department of the Treasury first issued paper U.S. currency in 1862 to
make up for the shortage of coins and to finance the Civil War.
How did
we come up with "$" as a dollar sign? Now, where it came from: Thomas Jefferson, who stole it from Spain. After the American Revolution, the new
nation wanted to free itself from British influence and was not about to adopt the pound and its sign as its currency. Instead,
the United States, at the behest of Jefferson, turned to the Spanish dollar. On the back of that large coin was the Two Pillars
of Hercules at Gibraltar. An "S" was imposed on them simply to show they were plural. "I'll buy that,"
said the US Congress. Source: EVER WONDER WHY? By Douglas B. Smith
HOW
DID THE DOLLAR SIGN $ ORIGINATE?
The origin of the dollar sign is not known, but may be derived
from the Spanish or Mexican "P's" that appeared on the peso, or piastre, which are Spanish silver coins of the
seventeenth or eighteenth centuries marked with an "8" because they were worth eight reals. The dollar sign "$"
is probably derived from the figure `8' as it appeared on `pieces of eight'. It was common to put two vertical
lines through the S? Originally, the sign for the dollar was a capital U with a capital S written over it. As years went by,
the curve at the bottom of the U was dropped and then we had the two vertical lines through the capital S. We got even lazier
and dropped one of the vertical lines and thus our modern $.
HOW
MANY DIFFERENT WAYS ARE THERE TO MAKE CHANGE FOR A U.S. DOLLAR?
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
Change for a dollar?
If you have
three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in U.S. coins without
being able to make change for a dollar.
WHICH DENOMINATION OF CURRENCY IS THE MOST COUNTERFEITED?
In the
United States, the $20 is the most counterfeited, followed by the $100 note, the $10 note, the $50 note, the $1 note, and
the $5 note. The $100 is the note that is most counterfeited in foreign countries.
WHEN
TRANSLATED, WHAT DO THE LATIN WORDS MEAN ON A DOLLAR?
The Latin above the pyramid, ANNUIT COEPTIS, means "God
has favored our undertaking." The Latin below the pyramid, NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM, means "a new order has begun."
At the base of the pyramid is the Roman Numeral for 1776.
PRECIOUS
GEMS
Are most diamonds made into rings or necklaces?
Only about 20 percent of diamonds are made into jewels of any sort. Because they are so hard, most diamonds are
used to make tools such as dental drills and metal cutters.
Can
an emerald be worth more than a diamond?
While diamonds are usually considered the most precious of stones,
a large, near flawless emerald is worth considerably more than a diamond of the same size.
Were
diamonds once a gem fit only for a man?
They certainly were - During the middle ages, only men wore diamonds,
as a symbol of their courage and virility. However, since 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to
Mary of Burgundy, diamonds have been the gem of choice for men who wanted to melt a woman's heart.
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The Federal Reserve
What is the cash in your pocket worth? You may think they money you spend every day is issued and backed by the United
States of America. But you're wrong. Take a look at the seal on the left side of the obverse of every single bank
note in your possession. It reads Federal Reserve Bank of...
Well, Federal Reserve
Bank must mean the bank of the Federal government or something, right? The Federal Reserve is not a branch of your federal
government. It is a cartel of private banking giants that operate to regular the economy of the United
States with authority given to it by your federal government, and much more frighteningly, the authority to print money.
Let me put those two words together for you, private and money. Your money is issue by privately owned banks.
This is what is called "fiat" money. Fiat meaning a legally binding command.
Okay, as long as our government
authorized this collection of private banks to print money it should be just as good as real U.S. currency, shouldn't
it?
Other than the unconstitutionality of fiat money, the Federal Reserve can print as much money as it sees fit.
In other words, as much money as the federal government needs. You see, the federal government pays for everything it
does by levying taxes. When taxes fall short it borrows money from foreign countries. When even this falls short, which it
always does, it borrows money from the Federal Reserve.
Where does the Federal Reserve get it? They don't.
They make it up. Print it out of pixie dust and cotton pulp. It is imaginary.
So what happens when you make money
out of nothing? When you pump billions of pieces of worthless paper into the economy you devalue the currency that is already
circulating. In other words, every worthless dollar that is printed reduces the value of the dollar already in your pocket.
That means you need more of them to purchase anything. There is a word for this you are already familiar with. Inflation.
So how long has this been going on? The Federal Reserve was created in 1913, with the enactment of the Federal
Reserve Act. And how have they been doing so far?
Since World War II Federal Reserve notes have lost
about 90 percent of their purchasing power.
If I am going to have a private company issue my money for me I think
I'd rather have Wal*Mart do it. At least their value has historically gone up! - Lewis
Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved. Please
feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
Treasury Bills
Treasury bills, or T-bills, are sold in terms ranging from a few
days to 52 weeks. Bills are typically sold at a discount from the par amount (also called face value). For instance, you might
pay $990 for a $1,000 bill. When the bill matures, you would be paid $1,000. The difference between the purchase price and
face value is interest.
Certificates of Deposit
Your own bank probably offers Certificates of Deposit, or CDs. Most banks will let you open a CD
for as little as $1,000 that will mature in only one year. CDs are earning over two percent, which can be four, five or six
TIMES as much as your savings account or even more!
Diamonds Diamond is the hardest material known to
man and one of the two best known forms (or allotropes) of carbon, whose hardness and high dispersion of light make it useful
for industrial applications and jewelry. Diamonds are specifically renowned as a mineral with superlative physical qualities
-- they make excellent abrasives because they can be scratched only by other diamonds, Borazon, ultrahard fullerite, or aggregated
diamond nanorods, which also means they hold a polish extremely well and retain luster.
There's evidence that they aren't terribly rare at all. The creation of the idea that diamonds are
rare and valuable is a relatively recent development. Until the late nineteenth century the entire world production amounted
to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa, and diamonds were soon being
scooped out by the ton. The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their
interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity
of diamonds.
Created in 1888, De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. is the most
successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce. While other commodities, such as gold, silver, copper, rubber,
and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to economic conditions, diamonds have continued, with few exceptions, to advance
upward in price every year since the Depression.
Today, diamonds are used
to symbolize eternity and love, being often seen adorning engagement rings and sometimes wedding rings as well. The popularity
of this modern tradition can be traced directly to the marketing campaigns of De Beers, starting in 1938. Prior to the De
Beers marketing campaign, engagement rings had no one particular stone associated with them. So, if you're one of those
people who dislikes being "manipulated" by advertising, then perhaps you should consider a more affordable stone!
Since gemological and industrial uses of diamond have created a large demand some of it is met by
synthetics, man-made diamonds which have similar properties to natural diamonds. This process has historically produced industrial-grade
diamonds, but producers have recently begun to produce diamonds with high enough quality to penetrate the gem diamond market.
Currently, trained gemologists are able to distinguish natural diamonds from all synthetic and simulant diamonds. However,
new techniques for creating and treating simulants (such as coating them with a very thin diamond-like layer of carbon) are
making it increasingly difficult to distinguish simulants from real diamonds. Copyright © 2006 ArcaMax Publishing, Inc. and its licensors.
Gold Today, our money is a funny thing. It plays
such a big role in our lives that we rarely stop to think that the cash we try to amass has almost no inherent worth. Of course,
for the world's financial systems to function, it's best not to dwell on that truth. You can't have people looking
in their wallets and saying, "Hey, these pictures of dead presidents are just heavy-duty paper. I'm not accepting
these crummy things for work anymore (or at least not so few of them)."
But gold is a
store of value that has been treasured by nearly every society that has encountered it. Gold has for millennia captivated
humans with its glitter and glow. Gold--whose luster is buffed by the knowledge of how hard it is to pry from the earth--is
something that nearly everyone will accept for work. Nothing else is as good as gold. Why?
The gold that encircles your finger today could have been mined in Spain before Christ was born,
fashioned into a torque necklace by the Celts, buried in a bog for centuries, rediscovered, melted down to form Venetian ducats,
and shipped to China as payment for
silks and spices. Or it could have been blasted out of the earth just a few years ago.
Gold does not rust or corrode. In fact, pure gold won't even tarnish. Precious artworks made by the ancient
Egyptians more than 3,000 years ago are as beautiful today as they were when the pharaohs received them.
A single ounce of gold can be stretched into a thin wire 50 miles long (80 km) or hammered into a 100-square-foot
(9-square-meter) sheet. Because it's soft, gold is easy to work with. So ancient cultures without sophisticated tools
could fashion elaborate works of art.
You know how people are. When anything becomes common, we just
don't value it as much. After trade with the Far East got far easier, those precious silks and spices came down in price.
But gold, well, you don't find gold lying around. Gold mining remains miserable, hard work. Most mines must move more
than 100 tons of earth just to get one ounce of gold.
In fact, we've
only ever managed to mine about 175,000 tons of the metal. That's it. You could put the whole world's gold supply
on a single oil tanker and sail it from king to king. It would melt into a cube just 70 feet (21 meters) on a side.
Gold has always been the metal of choice for impressing your minions. But gold isn't just for
goblets anymore. Today, gold gets used in all sorts of high-tech applications, from the semiconductors in your computer to
the heat shields on NASA's space shuttle. Only silver and copper conduct heat and electricity better.
In this uncertain world, gold is valued because of its permanence, its beauty, and the fact that its value
transcends borders and modern monetary systems. Not too long ago, the U. S. military was still issuing gold coins to fighter
pilots in case they were shot down in hostile territory. It's comforting, somehow, to know that even now a hefty coin
can be swapped for a ride to the border.
Colleen Kelly Copyright © 2007, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
NOTE: Twenty-four-karat gold is
not pure gold; there is a small amount ofcopper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
The History of Money by Mary Bellis
Money is anything that is commonly accepted by a group of people for the exchange of goods, services,
or resources. Every country has its own system of coins and paper money.
In the beginning, people bartered. Barter is the exchange of a good or service for another good or
service, a bag of rice for a bag of beans. However, what if you couldn't agree what something was worth in exchange or
you didn't want what the other person had. To solve that problem humans developed what is called commodity money.
A commodity is a basic item used by almost everyone. In the past,
salt, tea, tobacco, cattle and seeds were commodities and therefore were once used as money. However, using commodities as
money had other problems. Carrying bags of salt and other commodities was hard, and commodities were difficult to store or
were perishable.
Metals objects were introduced as money around 5000 B.C.
By 700 BC, the Lydians became the first in the Western world to make coins. Countries were soon minting
their own series of coins with specific values. Metal was used because it was readily available, easy to work with and could
be recycled. Since coins were given a certain value, it became easier to compare the cost of items people wanted.
Some of the earliest known paper money dates back to China, where the issue of paper money became
common from about AD 960 onwards.
With the introduction of paper currency and non-precious coinage,
commodity money evolved into representative money. This meant that what money itself was made of no longer had to be very
valuable.
Representative money was backed by a government or bank's promise
to exchange it for a certain amount of silver or gold. For example, the old British Pound bill or Pound Sterling was once
guaranteed to be redeemable for a pound of sterling silver.
For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the majority of currencies were based on representative money through the use of the gold standard.
Representative money has now been replaced by fiat money. Fiat is the Latin word for "let it be done".
Money is now given value by a government fiat or decree, in other words enforceable legal tender laws were made. By law the
refusal of "legal tender" money in favor of some other form of payment is illegal.
The origin of the "$" money sign is not certain. Many historians trace the $ money sign to either
the Mexican or Spanish "P's" for pesos, or piastres, or pieces of eight. The study of old manuscripts shows
that the "S," gradually came to be written over the "P," looking very much like the "$" mark.
U.S. Money On March 10, 1862 the first United States paper money was issued.
The denominations were $5, $10, and $20. They became legal tender by Act of March 17, 1862. The inclusion of "In God
We Trust" on all currency was required by law in 1955. The national motto first appeared on paper money in 1957 on $1
Silver Certificates, and on all Federal Reserve Notes beginning with Series 1963.
Electronic
Banking During the 1950s,
researchers at the Stanford Research Institue invented "ERMA", the Electronic Recording Method of Accounting
computer processing system. ERMA began as a project for the Bank of America in an effort to computerize the banking industry.
ERMA computerized the manual processing of checks and account management and automatically updated and posted checking accounts.
Stanford Research Institute also invented MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) as part of ERMA. MICR allowed computers
to read special numbers at the bottom of checks that allowed computerized tracking and accounting of check transactions.
ERMA was first demonstrated to the public in 1955 (September), and first tested on real banking accounts
in the fall of 1956. Production models (ERMA Mark II) of the ERMA computer were built by General Electric. Thirty-two units
were delivered to the Bank of America in 1959 for full-time use as the bank's accounting computer and check handling system.
ERMA computers were used into the 1970s. | ©2006 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. |
Why Roosevelt Is On the Dime In 1921, when Franklin D.
Roosevelt was stricken with a bout of polio that left him partially paralyzed, there were no organizations to lend support.
Although Roosevelt had the money for the very best treatments for himself, he realized that there were thousands of others
who did not. Also, at the time, there was no known cure for polio. In 1938, President Roosevelt helped establish the National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (which later became known as the March of Dimes). This foundation was created to help care
for polio patients and to help fund research to find a cure.
Funding from the March of Dimes helped Jonas Salk
discover a vaccine for polio.
Soon after
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death in 1945, the public started sending letters to the U.S. Treasury Department requesting
that Roosevelt's portrait be placed on a coin. The dime seemed the most appropriate coin because of Roosevelt's ties
to the March of Dimes. The new dime was released to the public on Roosevelt's birthday, January 30, 1946.
by Jennifer Rosenberg ©2007 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
Million Dollar Bill (Counterfeit
History) A
man was arrested in South Carolina after he tried to open a bank account with a fake $1,000,000 bill. The teller called
the police. Another man was arrested in Pittsburgh after he tried to pay for his groceries with a fake $1,000,000
bill. Reports say he became irate when the cashier wouldn't make change.
Friends, there
never has been a real $1,000,000 bill in the United States. Since 1969, when the Treasury discontinued its $500, $1,000, and
$10,000 bills, the most cash you can stash with a single slip is $100. But counterfeiters, you will soon see, are an enterprising
and creative lot. At least the ones that try to pass off real denominations are.
Counterfeit
History As early as the 1690s,
paper money was circulating in the American colonies. Within about 50 years, every colony was printing money. And so were
the counterfeiters.
Some colonies hired Ben Franklin to make their money, impressed
by the printer's skill at putting details in bills that made them harder to copy. But really, in those early years, paper
money was easy to fake--so easy that housewives could support families by forging five-pound notes.
That's what Rhode Island's Mary Peck Butterworth did. She simply laid a piece of starched muslin over
a genuine bill printed in 1715 and ironed it lightly. When she pulled the muslin away, it carried a negative impression of
the bill. She then placed the muslin on a piece of paper and ironed it again, transferring the pattern to the paper. After
freshening up the image with a quill pen, Mrs. Butterworth had money.
Before long, she
was employing most of her family and a couple of hired hands in her lucrative craft. She made so many fake bills that Rhode Island had to recall that whole issue of five-pound notes. She got caught, but because she
always burned her muslin cloths, the state had no hard evidence--and Mrs. Butterworth beat the rap.
Worse, Mrs. Butterworth was just the syrup on the pancake. In 1775, when the Continental Congress began to
print paper money to pay for the Revolution, rampant counterfeiting helped undermine the currency's value. People soon
referred to any worthless thing as being "not worth a Continental."
After the Revolution,
the Constitution, and the adoption of the dollar as the currency of the United States, it must have seemed like everyone was
printing money--and, surprisingly, a lot of it was legitimate. Before the 1860s, about 1,600 private banks were authorized
to print "state bank notes," and each bank had distinctive designs for its currency.
As many as 7,000 designs tempted counterfeiters--until 1861, when the federal government started printing
green-tinted "greenbacks" to finance the Civil War. By 1863, Congress had moved to replace the myriad notes issued
by private state banks with more uniform "national bank notes" issued by more regulated "national" banks.
And by 1865, amid alarm over the fact that at least a third of the paper money circulating in the
United States was bogus, the government established the Secret Service to target counterfeiters.
(It wasn't until 1902 that the Secret Service officially took the job of protecting the
president.) The Secret Service cracked down hard on funny money. They might have gone overboard
in 1881, when they destroyed the printing plates used to make play money for board games.
Today, every paper dollar in America is a "federal reserve note" printed by the U.S. Treasury's
Bureau of Engraving and Printing and issued only by the Federal Reserve Bank. And the Secret Service
continues to track down money cheats.
But counterfeiters have mostly moved offshore, using today's
computer technology--and in some cases, the resources of rogue governments--to iron out bills like old Mrs. Butterworth. The
lure of easy money never fades.
Colleen Kelly Copyright © 2007, Every Learner, Inc. All rights reserved.
Credit Cards by Mary Bellis
Credit is a method of selling goods or services without the buyer having cash in hand. A credit card
is only an automatic way of offering credit to a consumer. Today, every credit card carries an identifying number that speeds
shopping transactions. Imagine what a credit purchase would be like without it, the sales person would have to record your
identity, billing address, and terms of repayment.
According to Encyclopedia
Britannica, "the use of credit cards originated in the United States during the 1920s, when individual firms, such as
oil companies and hotel chains, began issuing them to customers." However, references to credit cards have been made
as far back as 1890 in Europe. Early credit cards involved sales directly between the merchant offering the credit and credit
card, and that merchant's customer.
Around 1938, companies started to accept each other's cards.
Today, credit cards allow you to make purchases with countless third parties.
Credit cards were
not always been made of plastic. There have been credit tokens made from metal coins, metal plates, and celluloid, metal,
fiber, paper, and now mostly plastic cards.
The inventor of the first
bank issued credit card was John Biggins of the Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn in New York. In 1946, Biggins invented
the "Charge-It" program between bank customers and local merchants. Merchants could deposit sales slips into the
bank and the bank billed the customer who used the card.
In 1950, the Diners
Club issued their credit card in the United States. The Diners Club credit card was invented by Diners' Club founder Frank
McNamara and it was intended to pay restaurant bills. A customer could eat without cash at any restaurant that would accept
Diners' Club credit cards.
Diners' Club would pay the restaurant and the credit card holder would repay
Diners' Club. The Diners Club card was at first technically a charge card rather than a credit card since the customer
had to repay the entire amount when billed by Diners Club.
American Express
issued their first credit card in 1958. Bank of America issued the BankAmericard (now Visa) bank credit card later in 1958.
Credit cards were first promoted to traveling salesmen (more common in that era) for use on the road.
By the early 1960s, more companies offered credit cards, advertising them as a time-saving device rather than a form of credit.
American Express and MasterCard became huge successes overnight.
By the mid-'70s,
the U.S. Congress begin regulating the credit card industry by banning such practices as the mass mailing of active credit
cards to those who had not requested them. However, not all regulations have been as consumer friendly. In 1996, the U.S.
Supreme Court in Smiley vs. Citibank lifted restrictions on the amount of late penalty fees a credit card company could charge.
Deregulation has also allowed very high interest rates to be charged. ©2006
About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
More
Credit Cards
In the beginning, credit cards were just charge accounts, offered by individual stores and only usable at
those stores. The first credit card that could be used at multiple locations was offered by The Diner’s Club in 1950.
American Express started off as a shipping company in 1850, shipping products across the United States and capitalizing
on the limited reach and slow speed of the United States Postal Service. They began selling
money orders and traveler’s checks in 1882 and issued its first credit card in 1958.
Visa was originally
called BankAmericard, a card offered by Bank of America in 1958 in California. By 1970, they had created an association, called
the National BankAmericard, Inc., of all the US Banks that issued the BankAmericard. It wasn’t renamed to Visa until
1976.
Discover Card was introduced by Sears in 1985 and gained notoriety because it charged
no annual fee. At the time, Sears also owned the brokerage Dean Witter Reynolds Organization
and the Discover brand was integrated into that organization. When Dean Wittermerged with Morgan
Stanley in 1997, Discover went along for the ride.
The Visa logo colors were chosen because the blue represented
the sky and the gold represented color of the hills in California where Bank of America was founded.
In 1984,
American Express billed their Platinum Card as extremely exclusive and it had an annual fee of $250 ($484.84 in 2006 dollars).
Today, the extremely exclusive card for American Express is their black Centurion card with
a $2,500 annual fee! (and requirement to spend $250,000 a year).
Copyright 2009 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved. Feel free to
forward this, in its entirety, to others.
Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) by Mary Bellis
As is often the case with inventions, many inventors contribute to the history of an invention. In the case
of the ATM, Don Wetzel invented the first successful and modern ATM in the USA, however he was not first inventor to create
an ATM. In 1939, Luther George Simjian started patenting an earlier and not-so-successful version of an ATM.
An automatic teller machine or ATM allows a bank customer to conduct their banking transactions from almost
every other ATM machine in the world. Don Wetzel was the co-patentee and chief conceptualist of the automated teller machine,
an idea he said he thought of while waiting in line at a Dallas bank.
At the time (1968) Wetzel was the Vice President
of Product Planning at Docutel, the company that developed automated baggage-handling equipment. The other two inventors listed
on the patent were Tom Barnes, the chief mechanical engineer and George Chastain, the electrical engineer.
It took five million dollars to develop the ATM. The concept of the modern ATM first began in 1968, a working prototype
came about in 1969 and Docutel was issued a patent in 1973. The first working ATM was installed in a New York based Chemical
Bank. (editor's note: There are different claims to which bank had the first ATM, I have used Don Wetzel's reference.)
"No, it wasn't in a lobby, it was actually in the wall of the bank, out on the street. They
put a canopy over it to protect it from the rain, and the weather of all sorts. Unfortunately they put the canopy too high
and the rain came under it. (laughing)
One time we had water in the machine and we had to do some extensive repairs.
It was a walkup on the outside of the bank. That was the first one. And it was a cash dispenser only, not a full ATM... We
had a cash dispenser, and then the next version was going to be the total teller (created in 1971), which is the ATM we all
know today -- takes deposits, transfers money from checking to savings, savings to checking, cash advances to your credit
card, takes payments; things like that. So they didn't want just a cash dispenser alone." - Don Wetzel on the first
ATM installed at the Rockville Center, New York Chemical Bank from a NMAH interview.
The first ATMs
were off-line machines, meaning money was not automatically withdrawn from an account. The bank accounts were not (at that
time) connected by a computer network to the ATM. Therefore, banks were at first very exclusive about who they gave ATM privileges
to. Giving them only to credit card holders (credit cards were used before ATM cards) with good banking records.
Wetzel, Barnes and Chastain developed the first real ATM cards, cards with a magnetic strip and a personal ID number to
get cash. ATM cards had to be different from credit cards (then without magnetic strips) so account information could be included.
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