Khachatur Manukyan, University of Notre Dame - How Benjamin Franklin Made Money Harder to Fake

With money, trust is key. So how did Benjamin Franklin stop counterfeiters when paper money was so easy to fake?

Khachatur Manukyan, research associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, looks into the past to find out.

Faculty Bio:

Khachatur Manukyan is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Nuclear Science Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. His research combines materials science, chemistry, and advanced characterization techniques to study energy materials, nuclear materials, and historical artifacts. His recent work has used modern analytical methods to investigate the materials and manufacturing technologies behind coins and paper money, revealing previously unknown details.

Transcript:

As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, many people are reflecting on the ideas and individuals that shaped the nation. Less attention is paid to one practical challenge faced by the American colonies: creating money that people could trust.
In the eighteenth century, shortages of gold and silver coins forced colonial governments to rely on paper currency to support trade, public projects, and economic growth. Unlike coins, however, paper bills could be copied, altered, and counterfeited.
Recent scientific analysis of hundreds of surviving colonial paper money notes reveals that Benjamin Franklin approached this challenge as both a printer and an inventor. Long before modern security threads, holograms, or microprinting, he developed a collection of material-based security features designed to make paper money more difficult to imitate.
Using advanced scientific methods, researchers examined the inks, fibers, fillers, and printing techniques used in eighteenth-century currency. The study showed that Franklin incorporated colored fibers into paper, used specialized carbon-based pigments, added translucent mineral particles, created distinctive watermarks, and produced detailed impressions directly from natural leaves. These features created notes that were difficult for counterfeiters to reproduce.
Many of these details are nearly invisible to the naked eye, yet they become clear through modern scientific analysis. The findings reveal that Franklin understood a principle that remains central to currency design today: trust can be engineered directly into a material’s physical structure.
By helping people distinguish genuine notes from counterfeits, these innovations strengthened confidence in a financial system that supported a growing colonial economy.
Three centuries later, the challenge remains the same. Whether protecting colonial banknotes or modern currency, the goal is to create something valuable that is also difficult to fake.

Read More:

[The Conversation] - We analyzed paper money printed by Ben Franklin to uncover his anti‑counterfeiting techniques and materials innovations

[PNAS] - Multiscale analysis of Benjamin Franklin’s innovations in American paper money