Popular Science Monthly 



347 



was 



Porter called in a high official of the sub- 

 treasury to see with his own eyes. That 

 worthy was so excited when he saw the 

 young man extracting the money that he 

 came near precipitating an 

 immediate explosion. 

 Legal evidence 

 secured, and final- 

 ly a confession 

 obtained. It 

 turned out 

 that the young 

 man had been 

 doing all the actual 

 stealing ; he asserted, 

 however, that the older 

 man had shared in the 

 loot, though this could 

 never be proved. 



The work of Captain 

 Porter showed that 

 there was no per- 

 fect means of securing 

 money bags. 

 Sealing-wax is 

 not only easily 

 broken or de- 

 faced but it 

 can be readily 

 manipulated so as to 

 duplicate the impression 

 Wax is even less satis- 

 factory. Lead seals can be opened and 

 replaced. With any of these materials a 

 single fold can be pulled down, as described 

 above, and part of the contents of the bag 

 so carefully extracted that only weighing or 

 counting shows the shortage. 



Captain Porter proceeded to invent a 

 safety seal that seems to have made 

 successful tampering impossible. Like 

 most effective inventions, the device is 

 remarkably simple. A cord is run through 

 a lead seal and placed around the mouth of 

 the bag, which is drawn into accordion-like 



The sealing instrument by means of which 

 the lead seals are crimped so as to make 

 it impossible to loosen the cord. It is 

 operated by means of a lever handle 



A bundle of bills ready for shipment. 

 Although securely sealed it will not escape 

 from the official eyes of the Government 

 until it reaches its final destination 



folds in the usual fashion. Then a steel 

 pin, attached to the seal, is run through 

 each separate fold. With a sealing instru- 

 ment the lead is crimped so as to make it 

 impossible to loosen the cords 

 without destroying the seal. 

 Thus it is impossible to 

 pull down a separate 

 fold, as the steel pin 

 holds each in place. A 

 loosened cord be- 

 trays itself. 



Another 

 baffling prob- 

 lem closely akin to that 

 of the money bags is 

 the theft of one or 

 more bills from a 

 packet shipped from 

 one bank to another or 

 sent to the sub-treas- 

 ury. Ordinarily the 

 bills are bound into 

 bundles containing 

 ten thousand dollars, 

 and a slip is placed 

 o n t o p show- 

 ing the num- 

 ber of bills and 

 their denominations. 

 Often an unscrupulous 

 clerk or messenger ex- 

 tracts one or more bills and then claims 

 that a mistake has been made in the 

 counting and packing. With the ordinary 

 binding, there is no absolute means of 

 proving him to be wrong, as the packet is 

 apparently intact. 



A safety currency press invented by C. 

 H. Bohanan makes this sort of theft 

 impossible. Ordinarily a packet of five 

 hundred dollar bills is from 2]4, to 2^ 

 inches thick. In a press it is reduced to 

 about i^ inches and it is then bound with 

 three sealed cords. Owing to the compres- 

 sion it is impossible to extract a single bill 

 without cutting all three cords. An inner 

 steel reinforcement in the lead seal makes 

 breakage impossible; nor can the grip be 

 removed. 



By breaking the middle cord and one end 

 cord, the contents may be counted. If 

 there is a shortage the whole packet may 

 be returned to the sender with indubitable 

 evidence that the interior has not been tam- 

 pered with. The compactness of the bundle 

 also makes this device useful in compressing 

 bundles of checks, drafts, and vouchers for 

 storage in vaults. 



