CERTAIN "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF BANK NOTE PAPER FOR THE PREVENTION OF FORGERY
Year: 1819

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, Sir
WILLIAM CONGREVE, of Cecil Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex,.
Baronet, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great.
Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at Westminster, the Fourth.
day of December, in the sixtieth year of his reign, give and grant unto me,.
the said Sir William Congreve, my exors, adñiors, and assigns, His especial
licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Sir
William Congreve, iny exors, adñiors, and assigns, during the term of years.
therein mentioned, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend,
within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and also in
all Your Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my Invention of "CERTAIN
"IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF BANK NOTE PAPER FOR THE PREVENTION
OF FORGERY;" in which said Letters Patent there is contained a proviso
that if I, the said Sir William Congreve, shall not particularly describe and
ascertain the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to
be performed, by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, and cause
the same to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six
calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters
Patent, that then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages
whatsoever thereby granted, shall utterly cease, determine, and become void,
as in and by the same, relation being thereunto had, will more fully and at
large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Sir William Congreve, do hereby declare that the nature of: my said Invention,
and the manner in which the same is to be performed, are particularly described
and ascertained in the following description thereof, (that is to say):-
The object of this Invention is to form certain tests of genuineness in the
paper on which bank notes are to be printed, which cannot be imitated after
the paper is made, as is at present the case with the ordinary paper used for
bank notes, but which tests or distinguishing marks or peculiarities must indis-
pensably be given to the paper in its original construction or formation at the
paper mill, which no ordinary forger can accomplish, so that no forgery can
be completed without the aid of paper makers. And the object is, moreover,
to make these tests or marks as simple as they can be, so that they may be
immediately recognized and understood by the most unlearned persons, that
all orders of people may be equally able to distinguish a bad note from a good
one, by observing whether the said tests exist or not in any note that may be
offered. Of these tests, and of the mode of producing them, there are various
modifications and gradations, which I shall here specify.
First, the very texture, smoothness, and thinness of bank paper united with
a new and peculiar degree of strength, and with a peculiarly transparent
water mark, so bright that it cannot be imitated either by friction, pressure, or
varnish, may be made to form a test of genuine bank paper, which can only
be imitated in the original fabrication of the paper and not subsequently. This
smoothness and thinness are to be accomplished by a particular process in
preparing the material by mashing or rubbing the pulp to pieces instead of
cutting it, by which the pulp is made of a fine, long, and flakey staple instead
of a short nature, so that the texture of the paper becomes tough and elastic
instead of being weak and brittle. This property also may be increased by
the mixture of certain transparent vegitable and animal substances, such as
gum, isinglass, parchment cuttings, and the like, by which a peculiar degree
of tenacity and transparency is attainable, and the due proportions of which
can best be regulated by the experiment of the workmen. This paper, when
dipped singly, will afford a much more brilliant water mark than ordinary paper,
from the nature of the materials, which may be augmented by forming the
water mark of very thin sheet copper or brass instead of wire, or by mixing
both. The water mark, however, of such single colourless paper cannot be
made permanently indelible. To accomplish this most desirable end, therefore,
in white paper, by which a certain test may be obtained in such paper of its
not being a forged water mark, this paper must be dipped in a vat of the
thinnest possible material twice for once couching it, and the transparency and

page_text: distinctness of the water mark will be improved by dipping the mould in clear
water between the first and second dips in the pulp, by which means a perma-
nent difference of thickness between the substance of the water mark and of
the plain part is created, whereas the ordinary water mark is, little more than
an impression on the surface of the paper. A note thus produced, though it
need not, with the fine materials proposed, be thicker than an ordinary note;
will on the whole be much stronger than the common note, .because it will' in
fact be more close or dense in its texture, though not thicker. The tests of
the genuiness of the white bank note paper which I thus manufacture are
indeed extremely delicate and beautiful, but they are not of the same decided
character and universal manifestation as those which I shall proceed to
explain.
These are formed by the introduction of a coloured layer of pulp in com-
bination with white layers, and are thus effected:-The material being prepared
and reduced into the finest possible pulp, as above stated, a mineral dye is
added to one of them, or'a vegetable dye will answer if the pulp be made of
material previously dyed. Thus I have found the Adrianople red cloth form
a most excellent coloured pulp, not only because the colour is peculiarly clear.
and permanent, but because it is a dye most difficult to give.
The pulps being thus prepared, the following different modifications of this
paper may be made for the purpose of giving the test or mark required, and
which is certainly not to be imitated but by a similar process to that of the.
original manufacture. This paper should be made in two different moulds,
one a plain one, and the other with a water mark either as above of thin
copper plate, or wire, or both, as follows:-
First, by three dips and three couchings.. A dip of the white pulp being:
taken in the plain mould, is to be couched; then a dip with the water-mark
mould is taken of the coloured pulp, and that couched on the white, and again
a third dip of white in the plain mould laid upon this, the layers of each
pulp being taken as thin as possible; this completes the formation of the sheet,.
and the felt is then laid on. The paper thus produced contains a dyed or
coloured layer with a most brilliant, distinct, and permanent or indestructable
water mark between two thin layers of white. The colour therefore is in the
heart of the paper, and is scarcely perceived until held up to the light. Now it
is obviously impossible to place the colour thus in the interior except in the
first formation of the paper. No person can, after the paper is made, dye the
heart of a sheet of paper without dying the exterior also; nor can there be
any test of genuineness devised whereof the proof can be more simple or self-
evident than the having thus merely to ascertain the fact of the colour being

page_text: in the interior of the paper by holding it up to the light, and thence deducing
that this paper must have been made under circumstances scarcely attainable
by the forger, or indeed I may say wholly unattainable by him, if due attention
be paid to the perfection of the manipulations in the original paper, since it
would be impossible to produce the triple paper in such perfection without
working in large quantities, and by very expensive and cumbrous machinery.
The second mode of producing this paper is by three dippings and two
couchings.
The triple paper made as above might be objected to for certain banks on
account of its being too thick. In that case, therefore, this paper may be
made, not as above by three dippings and three couchings, but with three
dippings and only two couchings. By dipping first in the coloured pulp, then
the white upon it in the water mark mould, then couching both these layers
together, which brings the coloured layer uppermost, then dipping the second
white separately in the plain mould, and couching it on the coloured layer.
There is also a third mode of producing this paper by three dippings and only
one couching. This is effected by dipping first the white, then the colour, and
then the white pulp again, one upon the other in the same mould, and
couching the three layers at once. These three different modes of combining
this paper give three different gradations of substance, whereof the latter is the
thinnest, and also the most rapidly made. This latter, however, requires more
dexterity in the workman, and is, perhaps, for that reason the best calculated
for the desired security, while its thinness places it still further from any
spurious imitation that might be attempted by pasting three sheets of thin
ready-made paper together. In those modifications of the triple paper where
more than one couching are used, a gauge is required in order to place one
layer exactly over the other, and for this purpose a very simple instrument
has been contrived, being a frame with hinges, to allow it to be raised and
thrown back when the felt is laid on, and yet always to fall down on the same
spot on the felts, so that by placing the mould into the angle of this frame it
is sure always to be couched exactly in the same situation, and therefore to
place the layers exactly over one another. This frame is further constructed
so that it will rise and fall on two fixed standards according to the number of
felts on the post. The construction of this instrument is so simple that
there can be no doubt of any person accustomed to paper making compre-
hending it. The test of this triple paper, as it may be termed, may be some-
what strengthened by leaving a margin of the interior coloured layer bare
all round one of the faces of the note, which any paper maker will know may
be easily effected by taking a smaller deckle for the last couching. By this

page_text: made
means the fact of the colour in the interior appearing deeper when looked
through than when looked at is established, because the colour in this margin,
though the same as that in the interior, being superficial, appears paler when
looked through, that is to say, the effect of the superficially coloured margin
is precisely the converse of the colour in the centre of the paper, though they
are the same tints. Whence it is deduced that if that which is superficial
looks paler when held up to the light, that which looks darker so viewed must
be in the interior, and thus every doubt as to the test is removed by proofs
existing in the note itself. I have already described a mode of improving
the brilliancy of the water mark in white bank note paper by a double layer of
colourless pulp. Here, therefore, it may be observed that this effect may be
still heightened by giving a very faint tint in one of those layers. It is true
this double paper would not afford all the advantages derivable from the tests
of the interior colour, because all superficial colour may be laid upon ready
paper. Nevertheless, certain peculiarities in the mode of laying in this
colour may be accomplished, which it would be extremely difficult for the
forger to achieve otherwise than by means of pulp in the original formation of
the paper. Thus it may be laid on in a mottled state by a peculiar formation
in the mould; and by the use of a thin copper strainer instead of wire in the
sieves it may be laid on so as to produce a sort of shade to the transparent
water mark; two descriptions of water mark, one dark and the other transparent,
being thus mixd by means of the two layers of paper, which would produce
a most beautiful combined effect, to be only imitated in the original construc-
tion of the paper, and being perfectly indestructable. Such paper would also
be thinner than the triple paper. The paper thus made of different layers,
whether double or triple, with the coloured layer, or without it, is susceptible
of another indelible description of mark in the interior, which cannot be pro-
duced but in the first formation of the paper; thus after the first layer is
couched, it may be printed upon at the mill either in colour or in black. I
have thus printed various forms or figures, and even the promissory part itself
of the note, in the very heart of the paper before it was finished, that is to say,
forming part of the first process at the mill. This printing, whatever it may
be, may then be covered with the outer layer of very fine transparent pulp,
either plain or with a transparent water mark mixing and combining if required
with the printed character in the interior. By this exterior covering it is
obvious that this printing is not only protected from injury, but that it cannot
be set off or rubbed down for the purposes of imitation. There is another
improved manipulation as to the printing upon bank notes similar to the
foregoing one, and productive of the same effects, namely, that the printing

page_text: may in like manner be performed upon the paper in an unfinished and damped
state, and previous to its being sized. This manipulation, on the same prin-
ciple as the last-mentioned process, will protect the printing from injury, and
from being sett off or rubbed down for the purposes of forgery, though not so
completely as the last-mentioned mode, while it also improves the impression.
And this also may be best performed by combining the operation of printing
with the original formation of the paper at the mill, which necessarily places
any improved effect thus attainable still further out of the reach of the forger."
In short, it is evident that. there is an infinite variety of these tests to be
obtained by the different modifications of the principles herein stated, which it
is not necessary further to describe:
In witness whereof, I, the said Sir William Congreve, have hereunto set
my hand and seal, this Third day of June, in the year of our Lord One
thousand eight hundred and twenty.
WILLIAM (L.s.) CONGREVE.
AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the Third day of June, in the year
of our Lord 1820, the aforesaid Sir William Congreve came before our said
Lord the King in His Chancery, and acknowledged the Specification aforesaid,
and all and every thing therein contained and specified, in form above written.
And also the Specification aforesaid was stamped according to the tenor of the
Statute made for that purpose.