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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Numbers, post: 652040, member: 11668&quot;]It&#039;s because of the new dry-intaglio printing process used for the 32-subject sheets.&nbsp; The 18-subject sheets had used wet-intaglio, in which the sheets had been dampened before the printing process, so that they wouldn&#039;t tear under the pressure of the printing plates; the new 32-subject presses were designed so as not to require that step.</p><p><br /></p><p>The old wet-printed notes had shrunk slightly after printing as they dried, so the new dry-printed notes had to be printed ever-so-slightly smaller in order to get a finished product of the same size.&nbsp; But there&#039;s no good way to &quot;zoom out&quot; a steel engraving by a few percent, so instead the BEP had to trim out small bits of the vignettes, portraits, borders, &amp;c. to achieve the size reduction.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s particularly noticeable there at the bottom of the $50, because the whole amount of the vertical shrinkage had to be taken out right there--there&#039;s no room to cut anything out at the top, as the tip of the Capitol dome had already been right up against the lettering, even on the older plates.&nbsp; But similar cuts were made on all of the other denominations too, both face and back.&nbsp; Compare a 1935 $1 to a 1957 $1, and you&#039;ll notice that a bit less of Washington&#039;s collar is visible on the latter, for example, and that THE and AMERICA are closer to the side borders than they used to be.&nbsp; It can make a good puzzle to get an 18-subject note and a 32-subject note of the same denomination and type, and see just how many subtle differences you can spot....</p><p><br /></p><p>Basically, it&#039;s all a lot like the &quot;wide&quot; and &quot;narrow&quot; varieties of the 1934/35 notes, except that those are better known because some of them changed in the middle of a series, creating collectible varieties.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oh, and something similar happened with the web-press $1&#039;s, as well--I&#039;m not sure precisely why, but the $1 note design had to be rebuilt for those plates too, and again there are lots of subtle differences in spacing of various elements on a web $1 vs. a regular $1 FRN.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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