page_title: Notable depictions of the Great Seal of the United States
section_title: Currency
hierarchical_section_title: Notable depictions of the Great Seal of the United States / Currency
caption_attribution_description: English: Version of the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States printed in a 1909 U.S. Government booklet on the Great Seal. According to w: Henry A. Wallace, this was the version of the Great Seal reverse which caught his eye, causing him to suggest to President Franklin Roosevelt to put the design on a coin, at which point Roosevelt decided to put it on the back of the dollar bill.
context_section_description: The Coinage Act of 1792 established the U.S. Mint and created the U.S. system of currency, and most of its rules were followed for many years. Among them was a basic design for any gold or silver coins; the obverse was required to have an "impression emblematic of liberty", with the reverse having a "figure or representation of an eagle". While using a depiction of the national arms was not necessary, various different arms designs were often used until the early 1900s, and still sometimes appear today on commemorative coins. Even before the mint, the 1787 Brasher Doubloon had a depiction of the arms on one side.
  According to Henry A. Wallace (then the Secretary of Agriculture in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet), in 1934 he saw a 1909 pamphlet on the Great Seal by Gaillard Hunt. The pamphlet included a full-color copy of the reverse of the Great Seal, which Wallace had never seen. He especially liked the motto Novus Ordo Seclorum ("New Order of the Ages"), likening it to Roosevelt's New Deal (i.e., "New Deal of the Ages"). He suggested to Roosevelt that a coin be made which included the reverse, but Roosevelt instead decided to put it on the dollar bill. The initial design of the bill had the obverse on the left and the reverse on the right, but Roosevelt ordered them to be switched around. The first bill to contain both sides of the seal was the series 1935 $1 silver certificate.
  The obverse had originally appeared on the back of the $20 gold certificate, Series 1905.  In 2008, the redesigned front side of the five-dollar bill added a purple outline of the obverse of the Great Seal as a background, as part of freedom-related symbols being added to redesigned bills.
caption: The 1909 reverse
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