Money. Beautiful, beautiful money

August 6, 2006 5:45 PM

Pyramids with eyeballs on top notably absent. There was a time when one could ride into washington D.C. and turn paper into silver. NSFW if 19th century engravings of carelessly draped breasts might be hard to explain.
posted by longsleeves (31 comments total)

Man the united states used to have some beautiful money. WTF happened?
posted by delmoi at 5:54 PM on August 6, 2006

These are absolutely beautiful. (Also, I think we'd all benefit if we had more pieces of art with titles like Science Presenting Steam And Electricity To Commerce And Manufacture.)
posted by blacklite at 5:56 PM on August 6, 2006

I think we lost something when we stopped personifying everything is vague Classical deities.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 6:06 PM on August 6, 2006

If you want the conspiracy theory of what happened, FDR as a member of the Illuminati hired a fellow conspirator to redesign the dollar bill to announce the arrival of the new world order.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:11 PM on August 6, 2006

can you imagine if they tried to put naked chicks back on money?

If democrats ever take power that's the first thing they should do. Along with making the money green again.
posted by delmoi at 6:28 PM on August 6, 2006

They can't even have naked statues at a press conference. No chance they'll put it on the money.
posted by empath at 7:24 PM on August 6, 2006

I deeply agree with what delmoi and TheOnlyCoolTim have said here.

Classical Nudity '08!
posted by furiousthought at 7:37 PM on August 6, 2006

Gorgeous! Great post.
posted by jonson at 7:44 PM on August 6, 2006

Thank You, jonson.
posted by longsleeves at 8:55 PM on August 6, 2006

Thanks for a really wonderful post, longsleeves. If you haven't seen it before, you might also enjoy Lilek's Bureau of Corporate Allegory, a collection of stock notes from the early 20th century.
posted by maryh at 9:21 PM on August 6, 2006

maryh thank you, I love this.
posted by longsleeves at 9:29 PM on August 6, 2006

Great link, even better art. I have to agree that Science Presenting Steam And Electricity To Commerce And Manufacture is the most beautiful piece of American currency I know.
posted by Dean Keaton at 10:27 PM on August 6, 2006

maryh, your link deserves an FPP.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:34 PM on August 6, 2006

just wanted to see another lilek's link on the front page.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:45 PM on August 6, 2006

My mentioning the title of that piece was really to highlight the vague personification of things and concepts.

What would we do now, though? Electricity Presents Her Son, Internet, to Media. Media, a dashing girl in a PRESS hat; Electricity, a grown woman now; and Internet, a ritalin-addled dirty little boy, naked, with disproportionately large genitals and wide, wide, scary eyes.
posted by blacklite at 11:00 PM on August 6, 2006 [1 favorite]

I feel sort of bad about posting the lileks link now, because it used to be a fairly huge collection of ephemera with an emphasis on bloated titles a la Science Presenting Steam.... Now that it's been whittled down to four pages, it's just.. not so good. Apologies.
posted by maryh at 11:33 PM on August 6, 2006

mary, it's 26 pages or so. some of the next and back links have been reversed for some reason.
posted by empath at 12:06 AM on August 7, 2006

Dude, they had a kid with an electromagnet on our money!

Lyman J. Gage was an idiot.
posted by zennie at 1:15 AM on August 7, 2006

America still has pretty cool looking money compared to, say the EU, the UK or Australia. Now if only you could stop your President's deficit spending, it might be worth something.
posted by rhymer at 5:11 AM on August 7, 2006

Oh, the little factoid regarding FDR and the illuminati came from the History Channel, so it must be true.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 5:41 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

What would we do now, though? Electricity Presents Her Son, Internet, to Media. Media, a dashing girl in a PRESS hat; Electricity, a grown woman now; and Internet, a ritalin-addled dirty little boy, naked, with disproportionately large genitals and wide, wide, scary eyes.

Awesome...dig Turner up, we could get "Amtrak Calculates her Transcontinental Schedule: Rain, Steam and Speed, and Maybe the Wrong Kind of Sunlight on The Tracks or an Unexplained Electrical Fire".


This is such a great post.
posted by Dormant Gorilla at 7:27 AM on August 7, 2006 [1 favorite]

I like the Fulton/Morse bill too. We need more scary, bearded technologists on our money. (In addition to the vague classical personifications, of course — that goes without saying.)
posted by hattifattener at 9:13 AM on August 7, 2006

beautiful stuff, thanks!
posted by Busithoth at 9:36 AM on August 7, 2006

Lovely links! I think my personal fave is the Peace and War $2.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:45 AM on August 7, 2006

nifty!
posted by Smedleyman at 1:57 PM on August 7, 2006

topless dixie chicks on the fiver?
posted by aiq at 2:24 PM on August 7, 2006

Alan Turing topless on the dollar FTW.

(He did have breasts after the hormone treatments after all)
posted by Sparx at 3:12 PM on August 7, 2006

We need more scary, bearded technologists on our money.

You mean like Woz wearing Dracula fangs and making a BOOGA! face?

Personally, I'd favor a "The Many Moods of an Irish Setter" bill. Or an Elvis bill where you see young, hot Elvis at one angle and old, fat Elvis if you hold it at another.

Electricity, a grown woman now
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:48 PM on August 7, 2006

What would we do now, though? Electricity Presents Her Son, Internet, to Media. Media, a dashing girl in a PRESS hat; Electricity, a grown woman now; and
posted by longsleeves at 9:01 PM on August 7, 2006

She doesn't care so much anymore, now.
posted by longsleeves at 9:23 PM on August 7, 2006

There was a time when one could ride into washington D.C. and turn paper into silver.

Actually, up until 1964 you could ride up to any Federal Reserve Bank in the country and get an honest to God silver dollar for your dollar bill. (There are, of course, conspirators who connect this to the Kennedy assasination, but that's another post.) For a few years after that, they would, grumbling, but on request, go weigh out a dollar's worth of silver dust if you absolutely insisted- alas, can't find a link for that, but feel certain I read it in one of Adam Smith's books.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:04 PM on August 8, 2006