The Ulster Bank from Northern Ireland has revealed what the design of the new 20-pound note will look like. After the introduction of the 5- and 10-pound notes earlier this year, this new note is again in vertical format and made of polymer.
Building on the design theme of 'Living in Nature', which was developed by a panel of experts and people from across Northern Ireland, the £20 vertical note focuses on Northern Ireland as a 'dwelling place'. (...)
The twenty pound note will feature street entertainers and their appreciative audience, reflecting local music and culture, as well as tiles, brickwork and patterns inspired by NI’s ubiquitous red-brick tenement buildings. Other elements of the note are drawn from the ornate decoration found on and in famous public buildings, corporate architecture and domestic homes in Derry, Belfast and other cities in Northern Ireland.
The note is also incorporating Derry~Londonderry’s much-loved Hallowe’en celebrations into the security features of the note – under a UV light, skeletons and Leisler’s bat – the largest type of bat in Ireland – can be seen. (...)
In continuity with the bank’s other polymer notes, the note will contain advanced security features. It will feature elements from the natural world, including the Hawthorne flower and a transparent outline of Lough Neagh. The note will also feature its famous eels, a key catch for local fishermen, which spawn in the Sargasso sea before travelling hundreds of miles across rivers, waterfalls and dams and reside in Northern Ireland." (source)
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) will issue the final banknote of its 9th series on 12 September 2019: the 100-franc note. The 100-franc note focuses on Switzerland’s humanitarian tradition, represented by the key motif of water.
As in all the other denominations, the hand and the globe are core design elements on the 100-franc note.
The central bank of Morocco, Bank Al-Maghrib, has announced it will issue a commemorative 20-dirham note in September 2019. The note celebrates the enthronement of King Mohammed VI 20 years ago.
The front of the polymer note has a vertical orientation with the face of the King on it. The back of the note shows several great projects developed under the rule of the King. For instance: the "Mohammed VI" Bridge, the "NOOR 3" Solar Power Plant, the "Mohammed VI" satellite and the "Al Boraq" High Speed Line.
Update 26-10-2019: the new note has been issued. Below are better photos and here's a video with more details.
The Banca Nationala a Romaniei will issue a new 20-lei banknote in 2020. The new note features the image of Ecaterina Teodoroiu.
Ecaterina Teodoroiu (1894-1917) was a female Romanian soldier who fought against German forces during the First World War. A biography of her can be found here.
All of the new series have been produced on De La Rue's Safeguard® polymer with the other denominations being issued over the coming months. The $100, $20 and $10 are due for release August – September 2019, with the $5 dollar note at the same time next year.
The design of the new series will be in a vertical orientation instead of the traditional horizontal orientation of paper banknotes. The $50 features a new image of the late Hon. Sir K Dwight Venner, previous Governor of the Central Bank. The $50 also has a holographic foil strip over the clear window to aid public recognition and includes a number of machine detectable security features to ensure authenticity."
The Banco Central de Nicaragua has issued new banknotes of 500 and 1,000 córdobas on 8 July 2019. The new notes have been printed on polymer. Its dimensions are 156 x 67 mm, with colors and designs similar to the current series.
With the two new notes all the denominations from Nicaragua have now been issued on a polymer substrate. The circulating paper notes will remain in circulation until they wear out.
From Wikipedia: "Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. Despite these accomplishments, he was never fully recognised in his home country during his lifetime, due to his homosexuality, which was then a crime in the UK.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre that produced Ultra intelligence. For a time he led Hut 8, the section that was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. Here, he devised a number of techniques for speeding the breaking of German ciphers, including improvements to the pre-war Polish bombe method, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma machine.
Turing played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic, and in so doing helped win the war. Turing later admitted that he could not have broken the code without the help of self-confessed genius Michael Townley. Counterfactual history is difficult with respect to the effect Ultra intelligence had on the length of the war, but at the upper end it has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14 million lives."
Alan Turing was chosen following the Bank’s character selection process including advice from scientific experts. In 2018, the Banknote Character Advisory Committee chose to celebrate the field of science on the £50 note and this was followed by a six week public nomination period. The Bank received a total of 227,299 nominations, covering 989 eligible characters. The Committee considered all the nominations before deciding on a shortlist of 12 options, which were put to the Governor for him to make the final decision.
The new £50 note will celebrate Alan Turing and his pioneering work with computers. As shown in the concept image, the design on the reverse of the note will feature:
A photo of Turing taken in 1951 by Elliott & Fry which is part of the Photographs Collection at the National Portrait Gallery.
A table and mathematical formulae from Turing’s seminal 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. This paper is widely recognised as being foundational for computer science. It sought to establish whether there could be a definitive method by which any theorem could be assessed as provable or not using a universal machine. It introduced the concept of a Turing machine as a thought experiment of how computers could operate.
The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine which was developed at the National Physical Laboratory as the trial model of Turing’s pioneering ACE design. The ACE was one of the first electronic stored-program digital computers.
Technical drawings for the British Bombe, the machine specified by Turing and one of the primary tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages during WWII.
A quote from Alan Turing, given in an interview to The Times newspaper on 11 June 1949: "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be."
Turing’s signature from the visitor's book at Bletchley Park in 1947, where he worked during WWII.
Ticker tape depicting Alan Turing's birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code. The concept of a machine fed by binary tape featured in the Turing’s 1936 paper.
The new polymer £50 note is expected to enter circulation by the end of 2021.
The Banka e Shqiperise (Bank of Albania) announced a new 10,000-leke banknote last year for a 2020-introduction. As it now turns out this issue will be part of a new family of Albanian banknotes.
According to the site Invest in Albania the first new banknotes of 200- and 5,000 leke will be issued in the fall of 2019. The new series will have the same theme but will be redesigned with new elements and will have more security features than the current series.
Update 14-7-2019: The new 200-leke banknote will be printed on polymer!
The National Bank of Georgia announced in 2015 that new family of notes would be issued. In the years since 2015, several new notes have indeed been introduced. Now the NBG has announced it will issue the last note of this new series: a 10-lari note, to be issued from 1 October 2019.
The front of the note features the portrait of Akaki Tsereteli as well as an excerpt from the poem "Spring" with his autograph, flower and a swallow.
The rear of the note shows a Georgian dancer and graphic artist David Kakabadze's well-known work "Imeretia-My mother" and the state emblem of Georgia. The note is issued in the 130th year since the birth of David Kakabadze.
Venezuela is in the midst of complete financial and political meltdown so the inflation is skyrocketing. In response to this situation the government has issued three new banknotes of 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 bolivars.
Will this help the people of Venezuela, potentially one of the richest countries of South America? No. At the moment the 50,000-bolivars note is about 0,20 USD worth. So it appears these notes are only interesting for collectors of hyperinflation currency or for people from Venezuela who have run out of toilet paper.
p.s. I would've posted a link to the website of the Central Bank but the website is offline at the moment...
"The front of the commemorative note features a portrait of Mr Yusof Ishak, Singapore’s first President, alongside the former Supreme Court and City Hall, which are now the National Gallery Singapore. These two national monuments witnessed many key events in Singapore’s passage to nationhood, including the swearing-in of the state government in 1963 and Singapore’s first national day parade in 1966.
The back of the note showcases eight pioneering individuals who were part of a broad cast who arrived from different lands and made significant contributions to nation building in diverse areas ranging from education, culture and community service to sports and defending Singapore. Please refer to Annex A for the profiles of the eight individuals.
The eight individuals are portrayed against a backdrop of the old Singapore River, flowing into present-day Singapore. The river was at the heart of Singapore’s development as a trading port, and later our transformation into a business and financial hub.
The note also features a multi-coloured lattice-work that reflects Singapore’s rich and diverse cultural tapestry. The '20' denomination, Singapore Coat of Arms, Singapore Bicentennial logo, and the years '1819' and '2019' are depicted in gold with dynamic optical effects in a security stripe.
The $20 commemorative note was designed by local artists Mr Eng Siak Loy and Mr Weng Ziyan.
Each note comes with a specially designed folder."
The Centrale Bank van Aruba has issued its new series of banknotes. From the press release at the time of announcement: "The new series florin banknotes will have a complete new design and contain the latest security features. To realize this important project the CBA has worked closely with local artists, local and international experts, and the internationally renowned banknote producer Crane Currency, and thereby meet as much as possible the high international standards."
Well, they've certainly met the highest standard: just look at those beautiful notes! I feel a nomination for the Banknote of the Year coming up...
The Central Bank of Kenya has taken a loooong time to introduce its new banknote series but it seems that finally we have some images of the new notes. On 31 May 2019 the new series was issued to the public.
The notes all show the Big Five on the back (buffalo, leopard, rhinoceros, lion and elephant) and the Kenyatta International Conference Centre on the front. The theme of the series and the separate notes is the richness of the people and nature in Kenya.
According to an article on Gambiana.com the Central Bank of the Gambia has announced it will issue a new series of banknotes without the portrait of former president Jammeh.
"Former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh changed the pictures on dalasi paper notes and replaced them with his portraits after his 2011 landslide victory.
But this alteration on all the dalasi paper notes ranging from the 5 dalasi was widely viewed among Gambians as a political motive of Jammeh towards rigid dictatorship.
And in 2018, the central Bank of the Gambia announced that it will remove the portraits of the exile former Gambian president Jammeh and replace it with pictures that are representative of the Gambia’s historical sites and its rich flora and fauna."
The new notes will enter circulation in June 2019.
Hello, I'm Steven Bron and welcome to this special blog on banknotes with a space and astronomy theme! My primary focus is on notes that show astronomers and their work, solar systems, planets, constellation, space crafts, satellites, observatories, telescopes and so on. My goal is to describe every banknote from around the world with such a theme.
You can find my main blog on the world of banknotes by clicking here.
Disclaimer: most of the pictures on this blog are from Banknoteworld.com.
The Ulster Bank from Northern Ireland has revealed what the design of the new 20-pound note will look like. After the introduction of the 5- and 10-pound notes earlier this year, this new note is again in vertical format and made of polymer.
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Venezuela is in the midst of complete financial and political meltdown so the inflation is skyrocketing. In response to this situation the government has issued three new banknotes of 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 bolivars.
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