- 42% of currency produced today in the United States are one-dollar bills. The current dollar bill design was created in 1963. The first dollar bill was created in 1862, containing a picture of Salmon P. Chase on the front. Mr. Chase was the Secretary of the Treasury during Abraham Lincoln's term. Between 1963 and the present, the following people have appeared on the $1 bill: Martha Washington, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant. The current $1 bill is the second oldest bill design, next to the $2 bill.
- You may have noticed that dollar bills feel significantly stronger, thicker and smoother than regular paper. Dollar bills are made of a wood pulp that contains Crane brand of paper, cloth including cotton, silk, and linen. This special paper and cloth mixture is known as "rag." Red and blue fibers are cut up into small pieces and inserted into the paper and cloth mixture to create texture and variety in the bill so it is difficult to counterfeit. Dollar bills are printed carefully with ink and are screened for mistakes before their release into the economy. However, sometimes a few streaked or erroneous dollar bills are overlooked, and become very valuable once they are uncovered.
- Dollar bills weigh about one gram each. Usually dollar bills circulate in the economy for about two years before they are recovered and eventually discarded. It costs approximately 4 cents to make one dollar bill. A dollar bill is sometimes known as a "greenback" because the back side of a dollar bill was originally printed with only green ink. It is rumored that most currency, including dollar bills, includes traces of cocaine on their surface. This, however, is not proven. A dollar bill is approximately 0.010922 cm thick. "Buck," a slang term for a dollar, is derived from the Old West, where goods were exchanged for buckskins, which were used as currency.
