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Topic: Counterfeit notes on Google Street View  (Read 5693 times)
Seth
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« on: September 06, 2014, 04:18:36 pm »

If anyone's interested, the Vancouver Police Museum is now on Google Street View. Their small collection of counterfeit Canadian notes can be seen here.

Track your Canadian currency online!

http://www.whereswilly.com
Snoman
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« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2014, 03:32:52 am »

Hi Seth,

What an interesting journey I just took on the internet starting with your post about the Vancouver Police's counterfeit money collection on Google earth. I ending up learning about geometric lathes and a couple artists and work not really even connected to banknotes or money, well not for the love of collecting it, just accumulating it. And then finding a new must have or project for this winter.

Best I can re-create my journey is as follows:

From your link to the police museum, I notice "POLYCHROME" in relation to some notes marked as counterfeit in the displays and wanted to know what Polychrome was and how Counterfeiters used it to make bogus notes. So I Image Googled "polychrome counterfeit" and a US $20 gold certificate caught my eye and the link to the printinghistory.org was right up my alley...

I read the article there, then had my curiosity piqued by the statement "Sir William Congreve’s still-mysterious compound printing technique" which just begged to be followed up on, because I love mysteries and am an amateur copper plate etching enthusiast.

Googled "Sir William Congreve" then followed a link to the British Museum and got to read about a self important guy that did some pretty cool things. I found out that we share many of the same interests and hobbies like... rockets, gunpowder, printing, inventing, perfecting perpetual motion devices, etc etc. Then a mention of geometric lathes took me out further.
 
I Image Googled "geometric lathes" and scrolled through a lot of interesting pictures until I saw a metal cylinder with the positive image of a 1960's UK pound note, and that took me to an article about Myles Calvert's visit to the British Museum. There I saw a pic of a Geometric Lathe used to make the guilloche's for bank notes, then a blurb about seeing some etched prints by a Korean artist caused me to follow that link as well to a well done website about Nam-June Paik. Interesting read, loved the format of the website, and totally off track.

To get back on track, once more I turned to google images and scrolling through the images I saw a slightly unimpressive guilloche that was no where near as impressive as all the other colourful ones on display. So I'm a sucker for Charlie Brown Christmas Trees, and I follow the link to a Kickstarter campaign for a film called Permeation; by Arius Blaze. Amongst contribution rewards like t-shirts, prints, one off etched recordings of music on a hand made record lathe (way cool in my books) there is an IRRESISTIBLE reward for pledging $1000, a hand made geometric lathe. It made the quirky design I first clicked on. And talk about teasing someone, there is no image or hints how it works because as he says he doesn't want copies made of it. Once it is given to the $1000 pledges, they can make all the designs they want but they would be asked to keep the machine a secret. I MUST GET ONE! I like guilloche's especially if they come from secret machines! But alas I've spent all my nickle dollars and my 1970's 50c piece hoard and thus have naught to offer, unless they would take the hand struck tokens I've made... probably not.

But the juices are flowing and I must have a geometric lathe!, so I will make one of my own design, eventually, ... eventually....

Thanks for sharing the post that entertained me for a whole evening,

Kyle.

Here is a list of the sites I visited on the journey:

1. https://www.google.ca/maps/@49.2819868,-123.0982611,3a,75y,195.81h,73.19t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sg7W5yvXMXty0u_gPettGsA!2e0!3e5?hl=en

"polychrome counterfeits" needed to be checked into...

2. Google Images "polychrome counterfeits"

Saw Amazing US$20 gold Certificate #6

3. http://printinghistory.org/american-currency-color-printing/

curious about "Sir William Congreve"

4. Googled "Sir William Congreve"

5. https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/paper_money/paper_money_of_england__wales/congreve_and_plate_printing/sir_will_congreve_plate_print3.aspx

Wanted to see a "geometric lathe"

6. Googled "geometric lathe"

7. http://mylescalvert.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/the-british-museum/

Piqued about the mention of "Etchings"

8. http://www.paikstudios.com/index.html

Side tracked, back on target... "geometric lathe"

9. Googled "geometric lathe"

Saw Runty guilloche, couldn't resist clicking on it

10. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/164080815/permeation-a-film-by-arius-blaze
 
 

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