Posted 07/26/2022 02:30 am
There's several reasons why fresh, crisp paper money feels different to fresh, crisp ordinary paper.
First, banknote paper isn't really "paper", which is normally made from refined wood pulp and slatherings of starch. Banknote paper is 75% cotton, 25% linen, no wood and no starch (which is why those iodide-based banknote-testing pens work - those pens test for starch, which basically all non-banknote paper is likely to contain). The paper is made by Crane Co, the same company that has had the monopoly on providing US paper money paper since before the Civil War, and much of the processing of those cotton and linen fibres that goes into obtaining the distinctive "banknote feel" is a trade secret. No point telling the counterfeiters exactly how to make more realistic banknotes!
Second, banknotes have quite thick ink printed onto them. The printing is applied using the "intaglio" method, meaning the ink isn't just blotted onto and soaked into the surface of the paper like regular printing on regular paper, it is stamped onto the surface to give a 3-D effect, not entirely unlike the wax in a wax seal. If you were to cut a banknote across a heavily printed portion of the note and examine the cross-section under a powerful microscope, you'd find that on average, more than half of the thickness of the banknote comes from the layers of ink, not the actual paper.
First, banknote paper isn't really "paper", which is normally made from refined wood pulp and slatherings of starch. Banknote paper is 75% cotton, 25% linen, no wood and no starch (which is why those iodide-based banknote-testing pens work - those pens test for starch, which basically all non-banknote paper is likely to contain). The paper is made by Crane Co, the same company that has had the monopoly on providing US paper money paper since before the Civil War, and much of the processing of those cotton and linen fibres that goes into obtaining the distinctive "banknote feel" is a trade secret. No point telling the counterfeiters exactly how to make more realistic banknotes!
Second, banknotes have quite thick ink printed onto them. The printing is applied using the "intaglio" method, meaning the ink isn't just blotted onto and soaked into the surface of the paper like regular printing on regular paper, it is stamped onto the surface to give a 3-D effect, not entirely unlike the wax in a wax seal. If you were to cut a banknote across a heavily printed portion of the note and examine the cross-section under a powerful microscope, you'd find that on average, more than half of the thickness of the banknote comes from the layers of ink, not the actual paper.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
