How does a dollar bill changer work?

Creating a good bill changer is a tough problem. The device has to work with all sorts of bills, from crisp new ones to ragged old ones, and it has to be reasonably good at telling real bills from fakes. In many cases, the changer also has to be able to sense the denomination of the bill. In order to accomplish these tasks, dollar bill changers use a variety of technologies. Several different patents listed below discuss techniques that people have employed. Some of these techniques have changed over the years as microprocessors have allowed more capability in the device.

Here are several of the techniques that have been tried:

• Many of the early bill changers took advantage of the fact that U.S. bills are printed with magnetic ink. They could therefore use magnetic heads (like the ones in a cassette tape recorder) to pick up signals from the bills. Areas of the bill (like the background behind the president's face) would generate signals at a specific frequency, and the detection of this frequency would validate the bill. Different bills generate different frequencies, so the frequency can also help determine what the denomination is.

  The backgrounds from behind the president's face on a $1, $5 and $10 bill: Note the different spacing used in each one. The spacing can help determine the denomination.

• Genuine dollar bills have a certain conductivity, and checking for the resistance of a bill can authenticate it.
• Inks and papers have different fluorescent properties, and these properties can help tell real from counterfeit bills.
• The optical properties of a bill, or a strip of a bill, can be sensed with a photocell or a camera and compared to valid patterns stored in memory. Different patterns from different bills can determine the denomination.

A good bill changer will use several of these techniques because people seem to have a very strong desire to outwit bill changers. If you read the patents listed below, you will find that they handle such things as people inserting just half of the bill, people inserting bills with strings attached so they can jerk them back out, people who try unplugging the machine with the bill half-inserted...

These links will help you learn more:

• Patent #6,073,744: Method and apparatus for currency discrimination and counting
• Patent #3,706,374: Currency Testing System
• Patent #3,870,629: Paper Currency Validator

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