Friday, April 26, 2013

Fort Worth Friday


What one thing does Fort Worth have that no other U.S. city, save the capital, has?

Okay, I'm sure there are lots of things, but I'm talking big.

Give up?

A currency facility! Sounds a little anti-climactic, but we literally make money here in Fort Worth. Falling under the auspices of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, our facility produces only paper money. No coins (which I believe involves minting, rather than printing) are created here.

Take a look at any paper money. If you see the letters FW printed in the lower right-hand corner, that means that bill was printed here in Fort Worth. Most likely your money will have that FW stamped on it--as well over half of all money printed is printed here. Did you know that 95% of the bills printed each year, whether here or in D.C. replace old, worn out bills? Also, the bills do not become legal tender until they are placed in the vault!

Sonshine and I went on a tour of the facility way back in 2007, I think, and it was very cool. They were still designing the new $100 bills at the time and had a lot of huge canvas curtains up to block portions of the printing rooms. A glitch in the manufacturing process was discovered in December 2010 and they had to stop printing the new bills for a while, but we should start getting the new one again some time this year.

The $100 bill is the highest denomination in circulation since July 1969.

According to one source, there was no concrete to be found in the DFW Metroplex for approximately three days back in 1990 when this facility was built.

Here is a link to a guy with a March 2013 post regarding his visit. He goes into a bit more detail about the whole process.

Pretty nifty, eh??

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I had no idea we printed money here! Very cool! :)