Banknote counter

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An modern electronic note counter with counterfeit detection capabilities.
An modern electronic note counter with counterfeit detection capabilities.

A banknote counter (or bill counter) is a device designed primarily to accurately count a quantity of banknotes. Additionally, a banknote counter may sort banknotes into batches and check for damaged or counterfeit notes.

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[edit] History

The first automatic bill counting machines (or banknote counting machines) were introduced in the 1920s in the United States and were produced by the Federal Bill Counter Company of Washington, D.C.. These machines were designed to increase efficiency in tellers in the Federal Reserve Bank and reduce human error. The machine would stop once a set “batch” of notes was reached allowing a teller to insert a wooden block to keep batches separate.[1]

While bill counting technology evolved in terms of the size and efficiency of the counters, the “friction counter” of today was not introduced until 1962 by Tokyo Calculating Machine Works of Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo. This technology quickly dominated the market thanks to increased speed and accuracy.[2]

In 1981 computerized friction note counters were introduced in the form of the REI High-Speed machine, which sped up note counting to 72,000 notes per hour and eliminated the need manual sorting and counting completely. This innovative machine could also sort notes according to their value and remove counterfeit notes.[3]

Many of these features are present in today’s note counting machines, some of which can detect a note's security features (e.g. magnetic ink, ultraviolet ink, magnetic strip, note density etc.) to identify counterfeit and damaged notes.[4]

Furthermore, today's machines are equipped with many more features like additions functions, batch functions, format recognition, etc. Such functions facilitate the everyday contact with cash in working with the machines.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Wells, Donald (2004) The Federal Reserve System: A History (Chapter 6) New York: Digital Vision
  2. ^ Tavlas, George S. and Yuzuru Ozeki (1992) The Internationalization of Currencies: An Appraisal of the Japanese Yen (Occasional Paper (Intl Monetary Fund)) Washington: International Monetary Fund
  3. ^ http://www.phil.frb.org/education/counting.html
  4. ^ http://www.google.com/patents?id=ROoJAAAAEBAJ
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