WASHINGTON — Honest Abe will become Colorful
Abe with splashes of purple and gray on a new $5 bill that will start
circulating in 2008.
The government showed
off the new bill Thursday in an Internet news conference — a high-tech
unveiling that officials say is entirely appropriate for a 21st century
redesign of the bill featuring President Abraham Lincoln.
The
changes are similar to those already made, starting in 2003, to the
$10, $20 and $50 bills. In those redesigns, pastel colors were added as
part of an effort to stay ahead of counterfeiters and their
ever-more-sophisticated copying machines.
Originally,
the five wasn't going to be redesigned. But that decision was reversed
once counterfeiters began bleaching $5 notes and printing fake $100
bills with the bleached paper to take advantage of the fact that some
of the security features were in the same locations on both notes.
To
thwart this particular scam, the government is changing the $5
watermark from one of Lincoln to two separate watermarks featuring the
numeral 5. The $100 bill has a watermark with the image of Benjamin
Franklin.
The security thread embedded in the $5 bill also has been moved to a different location than the one embedded in the $100 bill.
"We
wanted this redesigned bill to scream, 'I am a five. I am a five,'"
Larry Felix, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing said in
an interview with The Associated Press. "We wanted to eliminate any
similarity or confusion on the part of the public between the $5 bill
and the $100 bill."
Circulation is planned
for spring so operators of millions of vending machines have plenty of
time to make the changes necessary so their devices will accept the new
$5 — a denomination used heavily.
The bureau
will start printing the new notes next week in Fort Worth. The goal is
to have 1.5 billion $5 bills ready to be put into circulation, at a
date still to be determined.
The new $5 design also incorporates a number of other state-of-the-art security features.
Perhaps
the most striking change is a large-size 5 printed in the lower
right-hand corner of the back side of the bill in high-contrast purple
ink. That was added to help the visually impaired.
Lincoln
remains on the front of the bill and the Lincoln Memorial on the back,
but both images have been enhanced and the oval borders around them
have been removed. In place of a border around Lincoln's portrait, the
new bill will feature an arc of purple stars. Small yellow "05"
numerals will be printed on both front and back.
The center of the bill features light purple, which blends into gray near the edges.
Officials
hope the changes will make it harder for counterfeiters to pass fake
bills. In the United States last year, there were 3,945 arrests related
to counterfeit bills, equaling a loss of $62 million, according to the
Secret Service.
The next bill to get a
makeover will be the $100. It will feature the most advanced safeguard
yet, a new security thread composed of 650,000 tiny lenses that will
magnify micro-printing on the bills to give the effect of having the
images move in the opposite direction than the bill is being moved.
