Most commonly, coins are made of metals such as copper, nickel, aluminium, steel, zinc, etc. Money can be made of many different things. As the U.S. government debuts a new $100 bill on Apr. Paper money in the United States is made of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About Money. 806: Paper Currency. [8] The Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) were the first people to use ingots, the first form of metal money. It also contains security threads that glow under ultraviolet light. Charles Fenerty was helping a local paper mill maintain an adequate supply of rags to make paper when he succeeded in making paper from wood pulp. This accurate vision of money led Graziani to two epiphanies which have informed my modelling of money ever since I first read his papers. In all, China experienced over 500 years of early paper money, spanning from the ninth through the fifteenth century. Paper money features green, black, metallic and color-shifting ink that's formulated and blended specifically for banknotes by the U.S Department of the Treasury Bureau of Engraving and Printing. He neglected to patent his invention and others did patent papermaking processes based on wood fiber. Governments or banks would promise to exchange representative money for a specific amount of silver or gold. After Sweden used paper money, governments not only in Europe but around the world have made the paper money a staple of trade and commerce. Eventually, societies moved away from using precious metals to make money. Firstly, though we all … After winning in war, Julius Caesar featured his portrait on a coin in 44 B.C. [5] The Romans were the first to stamp the image of a living person on a coin. Known as representative money, the new paper bills and coins made of non-precious metals represented certain values that everyone in those societies could agree upon. 21 — this one will be redesigned to ward against digital copying and counterfeiting — TIME traces the history of banknotes from ancient China to modern cocaine dens. Charles Fenerty of Halifax made the first paper from wood pulp (newsprint) in 1838. It wasn’t until 1963 that the motto “In God We Trust” appeared on U.S. paper currency. The first known paper banknotes appeared in China.