A "noteworthy" guest speaker!
Posted by Harry Bracegirdle
on May 17, 2016
The Rotary Club of Port Fairy had a very interesting guest speaker at its Dinner Meeting held on 16th May 2016.
Richard Patterson and his wife Jan, were guests of the Club and Richard gave a very entertaining and enlightening talk about the evolution of bank note printing in Australia and overseas. It proved to be a much more interesting topic than one first conjured although I guess most of us are always interested in stories about money.
Richard and Jan recently moved to Port Fairy after spending 8 years in Beechworth where Richard, ever active in retirement, compiled historical documents on the town.
Richard, who used to work for the Reserve Bank's note-printing unit in Craigieburn Victoria, gave an inciteful view of the evolution of bank note printing from paper to polymer substrates, the evolution of printing inks and the gradual introduction of various security devices to deter fraud. This included details on the sort of anti-fraud techniques deployed, micro-printing and liaison with printer / photocopier providers to detect potential fraud when bank notes are attempted to be copied.
Richard passed around various samples to illustrate some of the modern techniques and also emphasised, understandably, that some information is classified and he would and could not divulge these!
The Club members thoroughly enjoyed his presentation and Rotarian, Kevin Matthews, thanked him for his involvement in the Dinner meeting.