Perkins Bacon
Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co was a printer of books, bank notes and postage stamps, most notable for printing the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive postage stamps, in 1840.
| Details on the mode of preventing the forgery of bank notes | |
|---|---|
| England’s currency was being forged at an alarming rate. The smaller bills were even being forged by people with little skill. They made this a crime punishable by death, but this did nothing to stop the forgery. England had the Royal Society create several reports on the problems, starting about 1818. They looked worldwide at currencies and really liked the American inventor Jacob Perkins’ bills for Massachusetts. The new USA «National Bank» chose Perkins plates to print the new national currency in the USA. In England, Charles Heath even gave a speech about him to the Royal Society. Jacob Perkins not only invented soft steel plates that could be hardened after being engraved, he also invented a roller which would apply higher pressure, and 64 piece plates (and more: nails, fire equipment, etc.). An expensive lathe technique was employed to make complicated designs for currencies (Asa Spencer invented it and sold the rights, and became an employee). Charles Heath wrote letters asking Jacob Perkins to come to England, as England was offering a £20,000 prize for creating forgery proof notes. Jacob Perkins was paid or loaned £5,000 and went to England with his machines, plates and associates and set up shop confident he would win the award, leaving his brother in charge of his Boston shop. He made presentations, and engraved sample notes. He worked in London for months, until it became clear they were not going to award the contract for national currency to a foreigner. The reports themselves mention Jacob Perkins currency or techniques more than anyone else, and in the end they applied some of his techniques, but did not employ him (at that time). England was currently using copper plates for their currency, and was using 1,500 engraved plates a year. One of the findings of the early reports was that Jacob’s steel plates would cost the Bank half as much to produce bills of much higher quality. They had underestimated the number of impressions from the plates, and the true cost would be less than 1/10 the cost because of the long life of his steel plates. |
Read more about Perkins Bacon: Origins, Brief Timeline, History, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words perkins and/or bacon:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
“The doctrine of those who have denied that certainty could be attained at all, has some agreement with my way of proceeding at the first setting out; but they end in being infinitely separated and opposed. For the holders of that doctrine assert simply that nothing can be known; I also assert that not much can be known in nature by the way which is now in use. But then they go on to destroy the authority of the senses and understanding; whereas I proceed to devise helps for the same.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)