In 1739, Benjamin Franklin, then a Philadelphia printer with a colonial government contract, intentionally misspelled Pennsylvania on the currency his house printed in order to battle counterfeiters. As the Smithsonian Institution tells it, Franklin reasoned that a counterfeiter would correct the spelling to make a bill look legitimate.
Today, manufacturers use both overt and covert technologies to provide a multilayered approach to security. Ed Dietrich, director for the Americas at Reconnaissance International and a newsletter publisher and consultant on authentication techniques, provides us with a primer on the state of anticounterfeiting technology development and use.
Anticounterfeiting technologies
| Technology | Description | Used In |
|---|---|---|
| Holograms (Overt) | Stickers or labels containing complex 3-D images | Retail and pharmaceuticals; financial and government sectors for document authentication |
| Optically variable Inks (Overt) | Inks that shift color when viewed from different angles | Documents such as currency, passports; product security |
| Microlenticular technology (Overt) | Microengineered plastic screen laminated over microprinting, forming irreproducable image | Currency, migrating to product security |
| Special inks (Covert) | Ultraviolet and infrared ink; also thermochromic ink, changes color when they contact heat | Variety of government documents |
| RFID | Tracks product movement through supply chain | Pharma, retail |
| Nanomarkers (Covert) | Particles engineered into a product; possibly ink in labeling. Readable with electron microscope | In testing (new technology) |