The humble dollar bill carries the oldest design in American wallets
The back of the US one-dollar bill has barely changed since 1935, and the front since 1963, giving it the oldest design of any American note still in use. Notes of five dollars and up have been redesigned twice since 1995 to beat forgers; for the single, no redesign is planned.
Washington's portrait comes from Gilbert Stuart's unfinished Athenaeum Portrait of 1796, and the reverse shows the Great Seal. The note is not paper at all but 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen, a mix that is harder to fake and tougher in the pocket. By the end of 2018 a single lasted on average 6.6 years before wearing out, and at the close of 2019 about 12.7 billion of them were circulating worldwide.
The first dollar note, in 1862, bore not Washington but Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Treasury Secretary. Martha Washington became the first woman on American currency with the 1886 silver certificate, and the 1896 Educational Series covered its face with allegorical figures showing history instructing youth. In 1928 all currency shrank to today's size; that year's dollar earned the nickname Funnyback for the odd ornate ONE on its reverse.
Wartime produced curiosities. In 1942, dollars overprinted HAWAII with brown seals were issued in case of a Japanese invasion, and yellow-seal notes paid Allied troops in North Africa; either could be declared worthless if captured. In 1957 the single became the first paper money to carry IN GOD WE TRUST, following a 1955 law, though old plates meant motto-free notes kept appearing into the 1960s. Silver certificates ended in late 1963, and the dollar was reissued as a Federal Reserve Note with green seals and botanical borders.
Since 1933 the dollar has been almost the only denomination used for experiments. Trials that year compared different cotton-to-linen ratios by printing marked blocks of serial numbers and tracking them against a control group; the outcome was inconclusive. In February 1991 the single also became the opening product of the newly built Western Currency Facility, starting with 3.2 million star notes for the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.
Source: United States one-dollar bill
