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Message:: [QUOTE="Numbers, post: 965634, member: 11668"]I'm pretty sure it was the Philippine currency, printed by the BEP when the Philippines were a U.S. territory. Originally, they made those notes a different size, so that they wouldn't be confused with regular U.S. currency; but then in 1929, they switched all U.S. currency to the smaller Philippine size to save on paper and ink costs. At the same time, they implemented the idea of standardizing the designs across types, so that (say) all the $5's would look the same, instead of having totally different designs for the $5 USN, $5 SC, $5 FRN, and so forth. That made the currency a lot quicker and easier to recognize, but it took away a lot of the diversity of designs we'd had previously. Incidentally, while the Educational notes and such may be beautiful from a collecting point of view, they raised a lot of complaints when they were actually in circulation. The dense designs caused a lot of ink to rub off on tellers'/cashiers' hands, and the ornamentally engraved denomination values made the notes difficult to sort and count quickly. On the whole, the modern designs get the job done a whole lot better....[/QUOTE]