The Universal Counterfeit and Altered Bank Note Detector, at Sight

by Henry C. Foote

RULES.

RULE I.
THE GEOMETRIC LATHE.
(Infallible when imitated.)

The “Geometric Lathe” is a very perfect and costly Engraving Engine, which produces very fine and beautiful ornamental patterns of geometric circles of such complication, uniformity, and exquisite perfection, that it cannot possibly be imitated in any manner. It engraves or turns the circular or oval patterns on the dies, on which the figures representing the denomination of the note are placed. A sketch of this engine is quoted from “Nicholson’s Operative Mechanic.”

“One of the most important securities to the paper currency of nearly the whole commercial world at the present time arises from the invention of transferring engravings, and the work produced by the Geometric Lathe, invented by Mr. Asa Spencer, while a resident of New London, in the State of Connecticut. The application of this Lathe-work for the security of Bank Notes was first made by Messrs. Fairman, Draper & Co., of Philadelphia, in 1816, and from its great beauty and difficulty of imitation, Mr. Spencer was induced to repair to England in 1819, for the purpose of securing the paper currency of that country. As had been expected, this work was put to the severest test which the combined talent of its great metropolis could invent, and having passed this trial in a very satisfactory manner, it was subsequently adopted very generally by the Banks and Bankers of England and Scotland.

“The Geometric Lathe differs materially from any other turning engine hitherto invented. The only one which has any similarity in the work produced, is the “Rose Engine;” but that is only capable of copying patterns previously made upon guides, while the Geometric Lathe forms its own patterns, which are all originals, and as various and unlimited as the ‘Kaleidoscope.’…

“The impossibility of successfully imitating this work by any process of hand-work within the reach of the whole combined talent of counterfeiters will not be doubted when the severe test to which it has been submitted is recollected: and even supposing any combination of counterfeiters to be in possession of the different machines and appendages necessary to effect their object, they would soon find that the time which would be required to learn the use of these implements in secret, could be more profitably employed in any honest occupation.”

The patterns produced by the Geometric Lathe are concentric, eccentric, or geometric circles, radiating from a common centre, and beautifully interwoven into each other, forming a perfectly regular and uniform ‘fancy’ pattern, so exactly true and uniform in its radiations, that there never is the slightest possible irregularity or imperfection. It is because the patterns are of such exquisite beauty and perfection, and at the same time extremely fine and complicated, that it is utterly impossible to imitate it by hand or by any process whatever. The Geometric Lathe does not engrave the patterns immediately upon the plate itself, but the patterns are transferred to the plate from roller dies or cylinders, generally in two places, as a majority of bills contain two dies alike, sometimes four, one in each corner. Being single-transferred the patterns are reversed, and are then white circles or lines upon a black ground. Of course whenever there are two or four dies that pretend to be alike in a genuine bill, they will all be exactly alike, being all transferred from the same one die. See the two transfers of the die in the [steel plate] containing the ‘3.’ In imitations of Lathe-work in counterfeit bills there will be a failure in two ways: first, in imitating regularity of the pattern, which is attempted to be done by hand, and also it is cut directly on the plate instead of transferring, so that what in the genuine is black spaces, is engraved black in the counterfeits, leaving white spaces and black dots, resembling cobble-stones—the white spaces between which made to resemble white lines, while it can easily be seen that it is only irregular black dots and scratches instead of white lines or geometric circles. Secondly, a failure in getting two dies exactly alike in the same bill—that is, where they pretend to be alike. If done by hand there cannot be two fine and complicated patterns made exactly alike; but in the genuine, where the pattern on one die or cylinder is rolled or transferred in two or more places, they will all of course be exactly alike. This same work is to be seen on the backs of watches, called “Engine Turning.”