Art and engraving on United States banknotes

In early 18th century Colonial America, engravers began experimenting with copper plates as an alternative medium to wood.

It was the transition to steel engraving that enabled banknote design and printing to rapidly advance in the United States during the 19th century.

[15] Francis Hopkinson does not appear to have done engraving, but he is credited with the designs for border-cuts, emblems, and mottos on three issues of Continental currency in 1778–1779.

In 1861, in fact until the mid-1870s, the Treasury Department lacked the facilities or infrastructure to engrave and print the bulk of it financial paper and therefore relied on external contracts with private bank note companies.

353) that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was given funding for labor, paper, transportation, and other expenses with the provision that all work be conducted on site, and for a price commensurate with that of the private bank note companies.

[18] It is uncertain how many proposals were submitted, or what was involved in the selection process, but the final decision was to draw heavily on the use of historic American images which adorn the Capitol Rotunda.

[nb 1] The motivation for this selection was two-fold: educationally it would circulate images depicting important scenes from American history while at the same time enhancing the security of the note by involving highly complex engravings.

[24] The contract descriptions addresses each denomination individually and specifies which image from the Capitol Rotunda should be used for the reverse and what type of vignettes should be on the obverse (with specific names).