These machines cost about five thousand dollars, and are built by the inventor, Mr. C. W. Dickinson, Sr.,of Belleville, N. J., who has invented and improved several other kinds of very useful bank-note machines.
It is said the American Bank-note Company, of New York, has a lathe, built by the company some years ago, which took about three years to build and cost more than ten thousand dollars.
The variety of forms that can be produced on one of these lathes is endless; and if Spencer could have had one of these, instead of the crude one he had, and could have started with the opening of this century and cut a new form every day, Sunday included, and every hour of each day up to the present time, he would still have possibilities enough left to fill out the next century.
This machine and its work have been thus minutely described because it is considered a most important security against counterfeiting; not exceeded in value even by the artistic perfection of the vignettes, or portraits, and lettering.
Doubt as to the character of a bank note has often been settled by a microscopic examination of the lathe-work. Even by means of the lathe on which a cutting has been made, it could not be absolutely reproduced; so, of course, it could not be done by hand or by another lathe. Possibly, after reading this article, some one will look upon a bank note as something more than simply cash.
The four-hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the earliest Slavonic printing press in the country was celebrated throughout Montenegro in July, 1893. The press was set up at Obod by the ruling prince in 1493, before either Oxford or Cambridge had a permanent press. Some of the books printed then are still to be seen at the Monastery of Cajnice, just over the Bosnian frontier. On the occasion of the celebration, universities and learned societies of Europe, including the University of Oxford, sent addresses of congratulation.
