WASHINGTON -- Get ready. A big Abe Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton -- part of new $5 and $10 bills aimed at tripping up high-tech counterfeiters -- will be coming to a cash register or ATM near you by the middle of 2000.
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers unveiled the new bills Tuesday that include a number of new features, but it's the bigger and slightly off-center portraits -- much like what was done to Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, on last year's new $20 -- that people will notice first."By now, the look of our new notes is probably quite familiar to you," Summers said.
The time between now and mid-2000, when the new $5 and $10 bills go into circulation, can be used by companies and metro stations to retool their machines to accept the new bills.
The old bills will continued to be accepted and recirculated until they wear out. This takes about two years. All issues of U.S. coins and currency have remained legal tender.
The bigger portraits of Lincoln and Hamilton, the nation's first Treasury secretary, are easier to recognize and their added detail harder to duplicate. Moving them off center makes room for a watermark and reduces wear on the portraits.
Other new features include:
Watermarks based on the portraits that are visible when held up to a light.
An embedded polymer security thread that, among other things, glows blue on the new $5 bill and white on the new $10 bill when exposed to an ultraviolet light.
Very tiny printing, visible with a magnifying glass, are located on both bills but in different locations. It appears as a thin line to the naked eye and blurred when copied.
Very fine lines behind both Lincoln's portrait and the Lincoln Memorial on the new $5, and behind Hamilton's portrait and the U.S. Treasury Building on the $10. When duplicated, the lines come out in a wavy pattern.
On the new $10, but not the new $5, a numeral on the lower right corner of the front is printed in color-shifting ink that looks green when viewed straight on and black when view from an angle is part of the new $10 bill.
The new bills will continue to be printed on cotton-linen paper as the old money so they won't feel differently, and the colors of the ink will stay the same. And, they also feature a large numeral on the back making it easier to see for the 4 million people in the country with poor vision.
Over the years, counterfeiters have graduated from offset printing to sophisticated color copiers, computer scanners, color ink jet printers and publishing-grade software -- technologies readily available.
No decision has been made on whether to redesign the $1, the most common bill, and the $2 bill. In addition to the $20, the $100 bill and the $50 bill also have received high-tech makeovers to thwart counterfeiters.