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