What Benjamin Franklin Learned While Fighting Counterfeiters
this article is full of embarrassing errors betraying a  level of ignorance i find astounding in someone writing a newspaper article on the topic; apparently the author couldn&#x27;t be bothered to read even the <i>introductions to</i> the wikipedia articles on the things they were writing about<p>— ⁂ —<p>nyt on the history of paper money:<p>&gt; <i>in 1723, he got to witness the beginning of a risky new experiment: Pennsylvania had just begun printing words on paper and calling it money. (...) Several colonies began printing bits of paper to stand in for coins, stating that within a certain time period, they could be used locally as currency. The system worked, but haltingly, the colonies soon discovered. Print too many bills, and the money became worthless.  And counterfeiters often found the bills easy to copy, devaluing the real stuff with a flood of fakes</i><p>those courageous pioneers!  how exciting to try such daring innovations, so they would be among the first to discover new problems like paper-money inflation and paper-money counterfeiting!<p>wp on the history of paper money:<p>&gt; <i>The first banknote-type instrument was used in China in the 7th century, during the Tang dynasty (618–907). Merchants would issue what are today called promissory notes in the form of receipts of deposit to wholesalers to avoid using the heavy bulk of copper coinage in large commercial transactions. (...) True paper money, called &quot;jiaozi&quot;, developed from these promissory notes by the 11th century, during the Song dynasty.[20][21] By 960, the Song government was short of copper for striking coins, and issued the first generally circulating notes. (...) The geographic limitation changed between 1265 and 1274, when the late southern Song government issued a nationwide paper currency standard, which was backed by gold or silver.[15] The range of varying values for these banknotes was perhaps from one string of cash to one hundred at the most.[15] Ever after 1107, the government printed money in no less than six ink colors and printed notes with intricate designs and sometimes even with mixture of a unique fiber in the paper to combat counterfeiting.</i><p>oh but maybe franklin didn&#x27;t know about this thousand-year-long history because it was on the opposite side of the world so it was actually a new experiment for him?<p>&gt; <i>The founder of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Khan, issued paper money known as Jiaochao. The original notes were restricted by area and duration, as in the Song dynasty, but in the later years, facing massive shortages of specie to fund their rule, the paper money began to be issued without restrictions on duration. Venetian merchants were impressed by the fact that the Chinese paper money was guaranteed by the State.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Early_Chinese_paper_money" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Early_Chinese_paper_m...</a><p>okay but maybe the venetian merchants hadn&#x27;t written accounts of this that franklin had read?<p>&gt; <i>In the 13th century, Chinese paper money of Mongol Yuan became known in Europe through the accounts of travelers, such as Marco Polo and William of Rubruck.[16][27] Marco Polo&#x27;s account of paper money during the Yuan dynasty is the subject of a chapter of his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, titled &quot;How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country&quot;.[17]</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#European_explorers_and_merchants" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#European_explorers_an...</a><p>okay but surely in england and the rest of europe this was just a tale of odd foreign customs, not something commonly done in franklin&#x27;s own time in london, where he&#x27;d served his apprenticeship?<p>&gt; <i>The shift toward the use of these receipts as a means of payment took place in the mid-17th century, as the price revolution, when relatively rapid gold inflation was causing a re-assessment of how money worked. The goldsmith bankers of London began to give out the receipts as payable to the bearer of the document rather than the original depositor. This meant that the note could be used as currency based on the security of the goldsmith, not the account holder of the goldsmith-banker.[30]</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Birth_of_European_banknotes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Birth_of_European_ban...</a><p>okay, so private goldsmiths issued banknotes, but surely at least it wasn&#x27;t a common practice for state banks to issue banknotes, at least before 01723?<p>&gt; <i>The first bank to initiate the permanent issue of banknotes was the Bank of England. Established in 1694 to raise money for the funding of the war against France, the bank began issuing notes in 1695 with the promise to pay the bearer the value of the note on demand. They were initially handwritten to a precise amount and issued on deposit or as a loan. There was a gradual move toward the issuance of fixed denomination notes, and by 1745, standardized printed notes ranging from £20 to £1,000 were being printed.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Permanent_issue_of_banknotes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Permanent_issue_of_ba...</a><p>how about the inflation problem from over-printing?<p>&gt; <i>The first short-lived attempt at issuing banknotes by a central bank was in 1661 by Stockholms Banco, a predecessor of Sweden&#x27;s central bank Sveriges Riksbank.[33] These replaced the copper-plates being used instead as a means of payment.[34] (...) Three years later, the bank went bankrupt, after rapidly increasing the artificial money supply through the large-scale printing of paper money.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Birth_of_European_banknotes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Banknote#Birth_of_European_ban...</a><p>well, maybe at least paper-money hyperinflation was a new problem in the 01600s and 01700s?<p>&gt; <i>Jiaozi (Chinese: 交子) was a form of promissory note which appeared around the 11th century in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu, China. Numismatists regard it as the first paper money in history, a development of the Chinese Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE). (...) Generally the lower the denominations of the Jiaozi the more popular they became, and as the government was initially unable to properly regulate their production, their existence eventually led to undesirably high rates of inflation.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jiaozi_(currency)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Jiaozi_(currency)</a><p>i guess not then<p>— ⁂ —<p>nyt on mineralogy:<p>&gt; <i>Franklin’s paper money contains flecks of mica, also known as muscovite or isinglass. (...) The Philadelphia area is notable for its schist, a flaky mineral that contains mica</i><p>okay so mica is the same thing as muscovite?<p>wp on mineralogy:<p>&gt; <i>Micas (&#x2F;ˈmaɪkəz&#x2F; MY-kəz) are a group of silicate minerals (...) The mica group is composed of 37 phyllosilicate minerals. (...) The commercially important micas are muscovite and phlogopite, which are used in a variety of applications.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mica" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Mica</a><p>&gt; <i>Muscovite is the most common mica, found in granites, pegmatites, gneisses, and schists</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Muscovite" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Muscovite</a><p>okay well how about schist?  is it a mineral?<p>&gt; <i>Schist (&#x2F;ˈʃɪst&#x2F; SHIST) is a medium-grained metamorphic rock showing pronounced schistosity. This means that the rock is composed of mineral grains easily seen with a low-power hand lens, oriented in such a way that the rock is easily split into thin flakes or plates. This texture reflects a high content of platy minerals, such as micas, talc, chlorite, or graphite. These are often interleaved with more granular minerals, such as feldspar or quartz.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Schist" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Schist</a><p>well, okay, so it&#x27;s a rock.  minerals are the same thing as rocks, right?<p>&gt; <i>Rocks are composed primarily of grains of minerals, which are crystalline solids formed from atoms chemically bonded into an orderly structure.[4]: 3  Some rocks also contain mineraloids, which are rigid, mineral-like substances, such as volcanic glass,[5]: 55, 79  that lacks crystalline structure. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which it was formed.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rock_(geology)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rock_(geology)</a><p>i guess not then<p>— ⁂ —<p>this sort of thing makes me think wp should stop allowing citations to the nyt as a &#x27;reliable source&#x27;<p>it&#x27;s tempting to blame the article&#x27;s author, veronique greenwood, for this remarkable degree of unconcern for truthfulness; but the phenomenon of greater concern is not that a single summer intern didn&#x27;t care whether what they wrote was correct or not, but that the nyt as an institution put her in the position of writing for the newspaper of record and did, seemingly, no fact-checking whatsoever.  what does that imply for issues where we can&#x27;t just look up the original paper, a wikipedia article, or a mineralogy textbook to find the nyt&#x27;s factual errors?  issues like public policy positions of politicians, for example, or information provided by anonymous sources, or original reporting by war correspondents?<p>(this is a separate issue from institutionalized invasions of privacy like cade metz&#x27;s doxing of scott alexander at the nyt, gawker&#x27;s outing of peter thiel and revenge-porning of hulk hogan, and vice&#x27;s quasi-outing of naomi wu; the issue there is not the falsehood of the information published)