[00:00:00] Welcome to English, please, the podcast where we explore interesting topics in under 10 minutes in clear, intermediate English. I’m your host, Christopher. I live in New York City, and I’ve always been passionate about languages and how we learn them. Whether you’re listening on your way to work or while cooking dinner at home, this show is designed to help you with your English listening and comprehension skills.
In 2006, a judge in Washington, DC, noted something surprising about the paper money of more than 180 countries. He found that only one country printed all of its bills in the same size and the same color: the United States.[00:01:00]
Oh, by the way, when talking about paper money, Americans say “bill,” while British English speakers usually say “note.” In the US, paper money comes in bills of one, five, ten, 20, 50, and 100 dollars. There’s also a 2 dollar bill, but you almost never see one. All of these bills are exactly the same size. A 100 dollar bill and a 1 dollar bill fit perfectly on top of each other.
And for most of the last hundred years, they were all the same colors, too. Mostly black on the front and green on the back. Now, think about the money in your country. With the euro, for example, the 5 euro note is gray, the 10 is red, and the 20 is blue. And the notes get [00:02:00] bigger as the value gets higher. Japan does the same thing with its yen notes, and each one also has special marks you can feel with your fingers. You can tell them apart quickly, and sometimes you don’t even need to look.
So in this episode, we’ll answer two questions. Why is American money green? And why are all the bills the same size? The answers will take us from a war in the 1860s to a courtroom, and to a problem that most people never think about.
Let’s start with the color. For many years, the US government didn’t issue paper money. Instead, private banks printed their own money in many different designs. Then in 1861, during the US Civil War, the government needed [00:03:00] money quickly, so it started issuing its own paper bills. The backs of these bills were green, and people soon gave them a nickname, greenbacks. You’ll still see that word in news about money sometimes, but people rarely use it in everyday conversation.
Why green? The most common explanation is fake money. In the 1860s, criminals could copy a bill with a camera. But cameras at that time could only take black and white pictures, so a copy didn’t look like the real green bill.
Then, in 1929, the government changed its money in a big way. It made all bills about thirty percent smaller, mainly to lower the cost of printing. It also gave each type of bill one standard design, So every five dollar bill looked the [00:04:00] same, and every ten dollar bill looked the same. Since then, every bill has been the same size, a little more than fifteen centimeters, or about six inches, long. And the government kept the green. According to the office that prints US money, green ink was easy to find, it lasted a long time, and people connected the color green with a strong, stable government.
Okay, so let’s take a short break from history. You can read every word of this episode at englishpleasepod.com, where there’s a full transcript for every episode. If you didn’t understand something, open the transcript and check. And if you understood most of this episode but still find speaking hard, your first private conversation session with me is free. You’ll find it at englishpleasepod.com/talk.[00:05:00]
At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned a judge who compared the money of more than one hundred eighty countries. Why was he looking at money at all? If you’re able to see, bills that look the same aren’t a big problem. You simply read the number printed on each bill. But if you’re blind, it’s much harder. If every bill feels exactly the same, how do you know if someone gave you a five dollar bill or a fifty dollar bill?
Many blind Americans found their own solution: Fold each kind of bill in a different way. In two thousand and six, a woman from the American Council of the Blind, a group that works for the rights of blind people, explained her system to the court.
She kept one dollar bills flat. She folded five dollar bills in half one way, [00:06:00] ten dollar bills in half the other way, and twenty dollar bills into four parts. But this system has a weakness. When you receive money, you still need a person you trust, or a machine, to tell you what each bill is before you fold it.
In 2002, the American Council of the Blind went to court against the government. The group said that US money was unfair to blind people, and that it broke a law that protects people with disabilities. In 2006, the judge agreed. The government appealed the decision and argued that changing the money would cost too much. But in 2008, a higher court agreed with the judge. The government had to make its money usable for blind people. However, the court didn’t tell the government exactly what to change, and it did not set a short deadline. The government only [00:07:00] had to fix each bill the next time it redesigned the bill.
And the US doesn’t redesign its money very often.
So what has changed? Some things, slowly. Even before the court case ended, the government started adding soft background colors to most bills. So today’s twenty dollar bill has touches of peach and blue. Most bills now also have a large number in one corner, which helps people who can see a little. And since 2015, the government has given free electronic money readers to blind people in the US. You put a bill into a small device, and it tells you the value with a voice.
But the biggest change is still on its way. The government plans to add a raised feature to its bills, a small shape you can feel with your fingers. The first bill with this feature will be a new ten dollar bill [00:08:00] planned for production in 2026. The other bills will follow one at a time and the last one isn’t expected until the 2030s. So that’s why all US currency is the same size and color. It started as a way to stop criminals and to save money. But almost 100 years later, that same choice made daily life harder for millions of people, and the solution is taking decades. Many other countries already made their money easy to tell apart by touch. The US is still working on it.
The next time you hold paper money, try this: close your eyes and see if you can tell which bill it is.
I offer private English conversation sessions with me on a video call. We just talk, mistakes are completely fine, and your first session is always free. You can find out more at [00:09:00] englishpleasepod.com/talk. If you’d like more practice like this every week, join the free English, please newsletter at englishpleasepod.com/free. When you sign up, you’ll also get two guides, one with 25 idioms and one with 60 everyday phrases that native speakers use all the time.
Again, I’m Christopher, and I want to invite you to join me in future episodes of English, please to hear about a variety of topics, all focused on helping you with your English. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts, and let’s continue this adventure together in clear, understandable English.
Sincere thanks, as always, for listening.
See you soon!