How Is Currency Made?

Engraving the Plate

The first step in the production of paper currency is the hand-engraving of the plate from which the money will be printed. This plate is called the master die. Each master die is therefore something of a work of art in its own right, and definitely the product of a master craftsman. The images on the master die are then transferred to the printing plate in a process called siderography. Sometimes images from older dies are mixed and re-used in creating a new printing plate, so not all the images transferred to a particular plate necessarily come from a single master die.

Printing

Money in the U.S. is printed on high-speed rotary presses. The backs of the notes are printed in green ink, and allowed to dry for 1 to 2 days. Then the process is repeated for the fronts, which are done in black ink. These days the paper typically contains watermarks or magnetic strips in the paper, which are intended to defeat counterfeiters.

Examination

Each sheet of newly printed bills is inspected for flaws before it is released for numbering. As bills are numbered in sequence, this examination must be done before the numbers are added.

Cut and Bound

The bills are then cut from the sheets and bound up into 100-note bundles. These bundles are then bound together to form a "brick" of 40 individual bundles, for a total of 4,000 notes. These bricks are then distributed to the different branches of the Federal Reserve.

Resources

• U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing