B. Franklin, Printer

B. Franklin, Printer

Welcome to Worth Its Weight , an ANA production from the Money Museum. I’m Caroline Turco, and today, we’re digging into a surprisingly overlooked chapter of Benjamin Franklin’s extraordinary career—one that, appropriately enough, is all about money.

Benjamin Franklin has one of those biographies that makes the rest of us feel bad.

Founding Father. Diplomat. Scientist. Inventor. Author. Postmaster. Statesman. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, negotiated the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, and was the only person to sign all four of the major documents that established the United States.

And, because apparently that wasn’t enough, he also found time to fly a kite in a thunderstorm!

Although, for the record, that famous experiment was a little more sophisticated than the elementary-school tale would have you believe.

But that was Franklin: endlessly curious. And his curiosity gave us bifocals, the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, and even the flexible catheter… If you know, you know!

And don’t forget his published works such as Poor Richard’s Almanack , with its endless supply of quotable advice.

It’s quite the legacy—one we’ve commemorated with our highest-denomination bill in circulation.

But long before Franklin’s face appeared on the front of American money, his name featured prominently on the back.

B. Franklin, Printer.

Because Benjamin Franklin didn’t just end up on money. He made it.

Literally.

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Franklin was the 15th of his father’s 17 children! Dad, Josiah, made soap. But while the Franklin household may have been clean, there wasn’t much room in the budget for education. Little Benny spent just two years in school, and by age 10, his formal education was finished.

But Benjamin wasn’t! He educated himself through voracious reading. And clearly, he was a pretty good teacher, because he eventually received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Oxford, and the University of St. Andrews.

At twelve, Benjamin began the education that would shape much of his career – as apprentice to his brother James, a printer in Boston. Three years later, brother James founded The New-England Courant , Boston’s third newspaper, and 15-year-old Benjamin begged to write for it, but James said no.

Unsurprisingly, the enterprising Benjamin found a solution. He invented a middle-aged widow named “Silence Dogood.”

Teenagers, am I right?!

Under the cover of darkness, Franklin slipped letters from “Mrs. Dogood” beneath the print shop door, where James found them, liked them, and published them. Before long, Mrs. Dogood’s ideas were the talk of Boston.

I wish I could have seen the look on James’s face when he discovered the truth… but I can certainly imagine the smirk on Benjamin’s!

The brothers’ rocky relationship never really recovered, and at 17, Benjamin broke the terms of his apprenticeship, fleeing Boston for Philadelphia. Which, technically, made young Benjamin Franklin a fugitive.

Arriving in Philly, our future Founding Father had very little money, even less formal education, and a broken apprenticeship behind him.

But he did have a trade. Franklin knew how to print.

And, like everything else, he was good at it!

Within a few years, Franklin established his own printing house, which published The Pennsylvania Gazette . He printed newspapers, books, pamphlets, and plenty of politics. No longer “silenced,” he gave voice to the multitude of issues facing his new city.

One issue – double entendre intended – particularly caught his attention.

Money.

The colonies never seemed to have enough of it. Gold and silver coins, as well as small change, were chronically scarce. Paper money offered a solution, which Franklin enthusiastically supported.

In 1729, he published A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency , arguing that putting more paper money into circulation would encourage trade and strengthen the local economy.

But Franklin didn’t just write about money. Pretty soon, he was printing it.

The following year, Pennsylvania awarded Franklin the lucrative contract to print its paper currency.

Talk about a turnaround! From a 17-year-old runaway with nothing in his pockets to a printer entrusted with making the money that filled everyone else’s!

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But how, exactly, does one make money ?

In Franklin’s case, quite literally with paper, ink, type, and a printing press.

Colonial paper money began with handmade paper, produced from old linen and cotton rags that were pulped, suspended in water, lifted onto screens, and pressed into sheets. Onto that paper, printers added the information that transformed an ordinary scrap into currency: the issuing colony, denomination, authorization, intricate borders, and identifiable imagery. Individual notes were then numbered and conspicuously signed before entering circulation.

If we compare that to the laborious process of minting coins, there are some obvious advantages. First, you don’t need a supply of silver or gold, which the colonies certainly did not have. You, therefore, don’t need to refine the metal, roll it into sheets, cut out blanks, and strike each planchet between hand-engraved dies.

Perhaps more importantly, English colonies weren’t permitted to coin their own money. Coinage was a royal prerogative.

However, while they couldn’t mint, they could print! (that would make an excellent t-shirt…)

Colonial governments could—and increasingly did—authorize their own paper currency. By outsourcing that job to a skilled printer like Franklin, they efficiently put badly needed money into circulation.

But everything that made paper money so practical also made it weak…

Because ultimately, it was just paper and ink.

If Franklin could put words and pictures onto a piece of paper and call it money, what stopped another printer, without government authorization, from doing the same?

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Well, the law, for one.

But that didn’t stop them.

Counterfeiting was a serious and persistent problem in colonial America, and paper money presented an especially tempting target. A counterfeiter didn’t have to fool the sophisticated machines, ultraviolet lights, or that counterfeit-detection pen we run across Franklin’s face today. They just had to fool the person standing across the counter…

…who had a lot working against them.

There was no single, standardized American currency. Each colony authorized its own notes, with designs and denominations that could change from one issue to the next. The average colonist routinely encountered currency they had never seen before.

Which made spotting a fake considerably harder. Was that border supposed to look like that? Is this a standard denomination? Does it usually have an image on the back?

For a counterfeiter, this confusion was useful.

The colonial governments needed a deterrent—which they interpreted as intimidation. On most notes, the warning was printed right there for all to see:

“To Counterfeit is Death.”

And they meant it.

Counterfeiting currency could be a capital offense, punishable by execution. Other laws and circumstances brought lesser—but still decidedly unpleasant—penalties. Just passing counterfeit money could be a crime.

However… there’s one glaring problem:

Writing “To Counterfeit is Death” doesn’t actually make the note any harder to counterfeit.

Benjamin Franklin knew that threats were not enough. If you really want to secure trust in paper notes, you have to make them harder to fake.

Thus, he began building protections into the money itself.

And as usual, Franklin got creative!

Let’s examine the evidence.

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At first glance, you’ll notice that there’s a lot going on for such a little piece of paper.

Elaborate borders. Different typefaces. Ornate lettering. Decorative symbols. Text squeezed into seemingly every available inch.

Some of it was practical: you needed to know who issued the note, what it was worth, and under what authority.

Some of it was downright entertaining, like when he deliberately misspelled “Pennsylvania” in various different ways on his 1739 notes.

But all that complexity—and wit—served a purpose.

It gave counterfeiters more to copy. Really made ‘em work for it!

Reproduce the words? Fine.

But then… match the type. Copy the ornaments. Get the spacing right. Check the spellings. Recreate the elaborate border.

And suddenly, things are getting harder.

But impossible?

Not even close.

So Franklin went deeper. Literally.

He started messing with the paper.

He realized that if you changed what went into the paper, a counterfeiter couldn’t simply copy what appeared on top of it. They, too, would have to develop their product from scratch.

He mixed colored threads directly into the pulp. And if you take a look at a dollar in your wallet… you might notice the resemblance. Tiny red and blue fibers are still embedded throughout our currency today.

Tiny flakes of mica, a naturally reflective mineral, were also incorporated into his sheets, lending the paper a subtle shimmer. And if you examine a modern $100 bill, the one with Franklin’s face, you’ll see a much more sophisticated version of that same idea: optical effects designed to be easily recognized, but difficult to reproduce.

To sufficiently counterfeit his notes, you had to know how his paper was made.

It’s believed that Franklin safeguarded his recipe. In 1742 and 1743, he kept a separate ledger to record his dealings with papermaker Anthony Newhouse. Though it’s never been found, historians hypothesize that the second ledger was an added security measure to keep his experiments with currency paper secret.

It’s clever… but Franklin, obviously, had even more up his tightly tailored sleeves!

Mother nature.

Franklin turned to leaves—not to read his fortune, but to protect one.

Did you know that a leaf’s network of veins is like a fingerprint? Intricate and unique.

Why painstakingly design a pattern too complicated to copy when nature had already done it for him?

Franklin just had to figure out how to replicate it.

Mr. “Time is money” wasted neither.

He took an actual leaf, pressed it into a soft surface to capture every ridge and vein, and from that impression created a metal printing block, which reproduced mother nature’s complexity again and again on the back of his notes.

The result is remarkably detailed.

Look closely and you can see the leaf’s entire vascular system branching across the paper—far more intricate than something a counterfeiter could redraw or engrave by hand.

But today, we can look EVEN CLOSER.

Nearly 300 years later, researchers put Franklin’s surviving notes under the microscope—and discovered that more interesting tricks that had been hiding there all along.

In a 2023 study of nearly 600 colonial notes, scientists examined everything from the paper fibers to the pigments and microscopic particles embedded within them.

Under magnification, Franklin’s ink stood out.

Most colonial printers—and known counterfeiters—used more the conventional bone black pigment, made from charred animal bone. However, Franklin’s currency contained something different: graphite.

But why…?

We know Franklin experimented with ink. We know graphite was relatively unusual. And we now know, thanks to this study, that counterfeiters copying Franklin’s notes weren’t using it.

What we don’t know is why Franklin was.

Maybe he liked the way it printed. Maybe it behaved differently on his specialized paper. Maybe its unusual recipe was intended as yet another hurdle for counterfeits.

Or maybe all three.

But this wasn’t like a leaf print or a colored fiber—something a merchant could easily spot. To the naked eye, black ink was black ink.

It took modern science to discover that Franklin’s black was chemically different from that used on other notes.

Nearly 300 years later, it seems Franklin is still holding some of his secrets…

Franklin’s approach to anti-counterfeiting measures was layered. No single trick made his money counterfeit-proof.

Which meant the counterfeiter couldn’t get just one thing right. He had to get everything right.

A philosophy that should sound familiar.

Because almost three centuries later, if you pull out that $100 bill with Franklin’s face on it, we’re still playing the same game:

Specialized paper. Embedded fibers. Security threads. Intricate printing. Color-shifting ink. Features designed to react to light.

This technology would have amazed Franklin, but the strategy?

He would recognize it immediately.

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Franklin didn’t stay behind the printing press forever.

A very wealthy man, he stepped away from the day-to-day business of printing in 1747.

Characteristically, retirement meant something very different to Benjamin Franklin.

Freed from the press, Franklin looked for new problems to solve.

He experimented with electricity, charted the Gulf Stream, and established a library, fire company, college, hospital, and philosophical society!

Different problems. Same Franklin.

Eventually, that problem was Britain.

Ever the pragmatist, his first instinct wasn’t revolution. For years, he tried to make the relationship work.

Franklin spent much of the 1760s and 70s in London, representing Pennsylvania—and eventually several other colonies—before the Crown. He petitioned, negotiated, and testified. When his efforts saw the Stamp Act repealed in 1766, it seemed diplomacy might succeed.

Spoiler: It did not.

New taxes brought new protests. Arguments over representation became arguments over authority. With every crisis, Franklin had to defend increasingly angry colonies to an increasingly frustrated Britain.

By 1774, the man who had spent more than a decade trying to repair the relationship was publicly humiliated before the Privy Council, accused of inciting colonial unrest, and fired from his position as deputy postmaster general.

When he sailed home to Philadelphia in 1775, he returned to a very different America…one already in the midst of battle.

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Franklin embraced the revolution.

His son, however, did not.

William Franklin, Bejamin’s illegitimate eldest son and the royal governor of New Jersey, remained a committed Loyalist. As Benjamin joined the Second Continental Congress and helped draft the Declaration of Independence, William was arrested by the revolutionary government and eventually imprisoned.

The Revolution turned Franklin against Britain. It also turned father against son.

At 70 years old, Benjamin Franklin packed his bags once more … this time for France.

An international celebrity – the scientist who famously “snatched lightning from the sky” – he harnessed that notoriety for America’s benefit.

Franklin charmed Parisian society, negotiated with ministers, and became one of the young nation’s most valuable diplomats. Most importantly, he secured the French alliance, money, weapons, and military support that America desperately needed to win its independence.

Franklin stayed until the job was done, negotiating the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and formally ending the Revolutionary War.

It joined Franklin’s rather extraordinary collection of signatures:

The Continental Association. The Declaration of Independence. The Articles of Confederation. The Treaty of Alliance with France. The Treaty of Paris. The Constitution.

Franklin’s name appears again and again. Not bad for little Benny, whose formal education ended at 10.

And yet, for all those famous signatures, one of Franklin’s earliest and most important contributions to the American experiment came decades before anyone even conceived of these documents.

Back when he was still B. Franklin, Printer.

As we celebrate America’s 250th year of independence, it’s worth remembering that our Founding Fathers were more than signatories. And Benjamin Franklin boasts one heck of a story, which is rooted in money.

Paper money ultimately depends on trust: trust in its value, and trust that it’s real.

Protecting that trust became part of Franklin’s legacy—but the challenge outlived him.

Counterfeiters got better. Currency got better. And 250 years later, we’re following in Franklin’s footsteps – trying to stay one step ahead.

Which makes Franklin’s place on the hundred-dollar bill all the more fitting.

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I’m Caroline Turco - thanks for listening!