DAVID SOLOMON ON MAKING
50 MILLION COUNTERFEITS

Big ideas that changed the world and how* they happened
*quite possibly possible

Valerie Solomon
David! Are you in the laundry? Would you like some tea?

Professor David Solomon
Perfect timing—yes, please. I just finished doing the washing and found a $20 note in my pocket, I must have forgotten to take it out. I’ll put it in your wallet.

Valerie
Lucky you came up with a certain invention that stopped our money from disintegrating in the wash! That really has made a big difference to our lives, hasn’t it?

David
Well, the fact that our banknotes are more durable really was a happy by-product of working on the security features. And the same with the fact that they’re healthier because they don’t take on dirt or disease of course, or that they are more environmentally friendly. It’s an interesting story, actually. 

Valerie
Oh, yes? 

David
Mmm, yes. I’ll have to start at the beginning. Do you remember Decimal Day? It was on the 14th of February, 1966. The day we transitioned from the pound to the dollar. We saw it as a sign of independence from the United Kingdom, so it was huge. Did you enter the competition to find a name for the new currency? I read an article about it at the time—they had more than 1,000 submissions, including the ‘austral’, the ‘boomer’, and the ‘kwid’. I’ve always been disappointed that they went with ‘dollar!’

Valerie
A rather boring choice, though I suppose it’s served us well.

David
True. But: I digress. The new notes were wonderful, state-of-the-art at the time. They had watermarks and metal thread, the RBA was stoked. But by the end of the year, a bunch of Melburnians with some office printers, a dose of greediness and plenty of beers between them managed to make a series of fake $10  notes. I found out much later it was almost $800,000 worth of forgeries, which would run in the tens of millions these days!

Valerie
Gosh. Is that when they called in the scientists? 

David
It sure is. The RBA’s Governor, a guy called Coombs, got in touch with the CSIRO and set us a challenge: to create the world’s most secure banknote; to make it hard to make fakes ‘good enough’ to pass. We were so excited, it was a big opportunity. 

Valerie
And who was the geezer who came up with the idea of polymers? Do I get to boast?

David
Ha, I suppose you do. My mind raced to the idea of polymer tech right from the start, but at the time we thought it might become a plastic ‘paper’. The clear plastic window we know today was a big, big step. There was a think-tank and lots of brainstorming, testing, and going back to the drawing room to come up with better solutions. It was a lengthy process, but we came up with some great ideas: a plastic note, a see-through panel, and a very nifty ‘diffraction grating’, which splits and diffracts light into several beams. It was revolutionary. Of course, when you make a radical change from paper to plastic, you have to actually test it. So, we went down to Fisherman’s Bend, built our own equipment, and got to making 50 million notes to show them it was possible—and a great idea to boot. 

Valerie
50 million banknotes! Weren’t you scared you’d accidentally mix them up with your own money?

David
Great question. We actually created $3 and $7 notes—to avoid the risk of getting arrested. It was a bit of a joke, really, but the reasoning was legit. So with our funny little $3s and $7s, we created various tests. From those using synthetic abrasive, dirt and sweat to see how they’d withstand tearing and abrasion, to ‘feel tests,’ our new notes performed exceptionally well compared to our old rag notes.  We thought we’d done it!

Valerie
… I feel a ‘but’ coming? 

David
Well, banking is an incredibly conservative industry. Technically, there was no doubt that our new notes were superior in every way. But there is a lot of inertia in this field. It took 21 years for the first plastic notes to be released, and that only happened because we finally had the right Governor.

Valerie
What did the Governor have to do with it?

David
You can imagine that changing an entire country from an importer of money to a world leader in new technology was a revolutionary step. This money feels so natural now, but it was very strange at the beginning of it! We needed a visionary Governor, and it took a long time for the right person in the job to come along. It was Governor Bob Johnston who was finally gutsy enough to make the decision to move the project forward…. And look at us now! 

Valerie
While everyone else was too scared to make a mistake in the banking industry, Bob helped change the future of Australia?

David
Bingo. We found people who could take, develop and print our new bank notes, and now it’s a huge Australian success story. Our bank notes are not only colourful, they’re safe. They’ve been adopted by 30-odd other countries. It’s a high-tech, co tinuslly evolving export industry we so desperately need.

And I do love that our fellow Australians have nicknamed them. ‘lobsters’, ‘pineapples’, even a humble ‘prawn’ or ‘galah’ instead of a fiver. Aren’t we a funny bunch! 

Want to get your money’s worth? Here is a CSIRO ‘Inventions’ blog post, or nerd out with the book.

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