WHEN AND HOW BANK OF ENGLAND NOTES ARE MADE.
IN a picturesque Hampshire nook in the valley of the river Test stands a busy mill from which is produced the paper whose crispness is music to the human ear all the world over. Since 1719 this Leverstoke mill has been busy in the manufacture of the Bank of England note paper, and at the present time about fifty thousand of the coveted crisp pieces of paper are made there daily. To a careless observer there does not appear to be much difference between a Bank of England note of the present day and one of those which were first issued toward the end of the seventeenth century, but when looked into it will be found that the present note is, as regards the quality of the paper and the excellence of the engraved writing, a much more remarkable production. The fact is, the Bank of England and forgers of false notes have been running a race—the bank to turn out a note which defies the power of the forger to imitate it, and those nimble-fingered and keen-witted gentry to keep even with the bank. The notes now in use are most elaborately manufactured bits of paper. The paper itself is remarkable in many ways; none other has that peculiar feel of crispness and toughness, while the eye (when it has satisfied itself with the amount) may dwell with admiration on the paper’s remarkable whiteness. Its thinness and transparency are guards against two once popular modes of forgery,—the washing out of the printing by means of turpentine and erasure with the knife. The wire mark or watermark is another precaution against counterfeiting, and is produced in the paper while it is in a state of pulp. In the old manufactures of bank notes this watermark was caused by an immense number of wires (over 2,000) stitched and sewn together; now it is engraved in a steel-faced die, which is afterward hardened and is then used as a punch to stamp the pattern out of plates of sheet brass. The shading of the letters of this watermark enormously increases the difficulty of imitation. The paper is made entirely from pieces of new linen and cotton, and the toughness of it can be roughly guessed from the fact that a single bank note will, when unsized, support the weight of thirty-six pounds, while when sized you may lift fifty-six pounds with it. Few people would imagine that a Bank of England note was not of the same thickness all through. It is not, though. The paper is thicker in the left-hand corner, to enable it to take a better and sharper impression of the vignette there, and it is also considerably thicker in the dark shadows of the center letters, and under the figures at the ends. Counterfeit notes are invariably of only one thickness throughout. The printing is done from electrotypes, the figure of Britannia being the design of Maclise, the late Royal Academician. Even the printing ink is of special make, and is manufactured at the bank. Comparing a genuine with a forged note, one observes that the print on the latter is generally bluish or brown. On the real note it is a velvety black. The chief ingredients used in making the ink are linseed oil and the charred husks and some other portions of Rhenish grapes. The notes are printed at the rate of 3,000 an hour at Napier’s steam press, and the bank issues 9,000,000 of them in a year, representing about £300,000,000 in hard cash.—London Answers.