East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1906-03-19
TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS
COSE LARGE SUMS.

Enormous sums of money are fire.
quently expended by various govern
ments to rectify errors, often appar-
emily trivial. in government printing.
The United States some years ago,
destroyed 100000 telegraph forms
owing to the misspelling of single
word In 1883 several hundred thous-
and greenbacks were cancelled before
issue owing to the same cause. An
employe was convicted for attempting
to steal some of these worthless notes,
with the intention of selling them to
collectors, =
The Austrian government is SO in
tolerant of mistakes that 1t cancels
documents not only on the ground of
serious mistake or misspelling, but
even as the result of a misshapem
| letter. The use of small, instead OF
| capital "B" in the word Brief
led short time ago to the destruc-
tion of $4,000 forms issued to the
various post offices.
| In 1850 an Austrian designer OF
! bank notes signed his name in tiny
| letters at the foot of a drawing. The
engraver copied the name, and, before
| the mistake was discovered. 10000
notes We're printed. all of which had
| to be burned.
A symbolical figure on anothe,
Austrian note was maliciously given
a beard which could be seen If the
note was held at a certain angle in
the light.
Before the union of Italy, more
that one attempt was secretly made
to turn official papers and notes to
propagandist uses. A customs house
regulation form was so spaced by the
cCmpositor that the initial words in
every line. if read consecutively. were
declaration against the papal claim
to govern Rome.
In another case the spacing of
words in certain bank notes were so
arranged that by drawing n pencil
line in a particular way, rude out
line of the arms of Savoy resulted.
These notes, of course, never saw the
light, the device being too obvious to
escape detection.
In 1901 a Spanish engraver was
heard boasting that he had "signed
his name" on every one of 10000
bank notes just about to be issued.
When called up and asked for an eX-
plaration he declared that he had
been joking. But an examination of
the notes showed that certain letters
in one line were raised a microscop-
ical distance above those next to
them. These raised letters spelled
the employees name. One hundred
and fifty pounds was the price paid
by the authorities for their engraver's
joke.
The Kaiser's persistent interference
in all matters of art has cost the
Fatherland heavy losses in cancelled
printed matter. One of his first acts
as sovereign was to show his subor-
dinates how the imperial arms should
be printed. After many thousand
forms and documents had been i'm
pressed with these arms an antiquar-
ian of high authority proved to his
majesty that the new design was nos
only wrong, but also humiliating to
himself. Fifteen hundred pounds
worth of paper were promptly reduc-
ed to ashes.
In another case the Kaiser Sub
edited" the German money order
form in such a way that the public
could not make head or tail of this.
Finally the new form had to be called
in and thousands of unissued copies
destroyed.
Fifteen thousand pounds worth of
the eleven shilling postal orders had
to be destroyed by the general post
poundage stamped on the face hav-
ing been Id. instead of I'D, as it
should have been. The estimated loss
to the country was f100.
England seldom has to put up with
such losses, but foreign governments
are less lucky. Both on the Continent
and in America carelessness or wan
tonness in misprinting money orders,
telegraph forms and bank notes have
led to serious loss and curious compli-
cations.
France has been bad sufferer. In
1898 more than twenty thousand hum
dred francs credit notes were printed
with a word badly mispelled the err
ror not being noticed until some of the
notes had been issued to banks.
A couple of years later an engraveT
under notice of dismissal, cOntrived to
number series inaccuratey, with the
result that the notes had to be can
celled.
During the Crimean war, a foreign
firm of engravers, settled in Russia,
printed half a million credit notes
with the imperial arms reversed. The
| government. of course, refused to ac-
cept the notes and the engravers had
| to put up with a loss of $4,000.