Skewing Technique Goes Viral

How do you read a signature that is heavily slanted with the letters seemingly run together? Genealogists have that problem when trying to identify signatures but numismatists (coin and money collectors) also have the same problem when trying to identify signatures on banknotes and checks.

The answer?

Open a digital image of the signature in a photoediting program and then skew it (slant it) until the signature appears to be more vertical. A great example can be found in The E-Sylum, an electronic publication of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, at http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n43a06.html.

Neat trick! My thanks to Shirley Wilcox for telling me about the article.

To read the complete article, see:Skewing - A Technique for Signature Identification(blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2011/10/
skewing-a-technique-for-signature-identification-.html)

American Interactions with Paper Money
Anne E. Bentley of the Massachusetts Historical Society writes:

2 November 2011
Wednesday, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Brown-Bag
Joshua Greenberg, M.H.S. and Bridgewater State University
Face to Face Value: American Interactions with Paper Money in the Early 19th Century

The proliferation of banks and other monetary minded institutions in the early republic fashioned more than the skeleton of a financial infrastructure, it saturated the nation with more than 5,000 unique legal and semi-legal forms of bank notes and shinplasters. This project examines how Americans engaged and actually used paper money as it circulated from person to person. Focusing on microlevel transactions, rather than macrolevel banking, it reveals the variety of ways people attempted to make sense of this chaotic system.

Free and open to the public

More Two-Faced Coins
Regarding the quiz question about U.S. coins depicting the same person on both obverse and reverse, Chris Fuccione writes:

Abe's in good company. Caroline Newton of Baldwin's in London forwarded a press release about the firm's upcoming sale of the Prospero Collection of ancient Greek coins. Featured is another "two-faced" coin.

For more information about the sale, see:www.baldwin.co.uk/prospero.

Who Says Paper Was Worth More Than Gold?
Tom DeLorey writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: OCTOBER 23, 2011(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n44a14.html)

Medal of Honor Certificates
Fred Schwan writes:

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:UNISSUED MEDALS OF HONOR TURNED IN TO AUTHORITIES(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n44a15.html)