Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The colors of money

A bank named Canada Trust has named its automated teller machines, "Green Machine." The Green Machine logo is half-clever. It's a dollar sign (same in the U.S. and Canada) that is mutated into a letter "g." This is then used in the confusing manner of an initial cap. So you can read it Green Gmachine or Reen Machine or -- with some effort -- Green Machine.

$reen $machine
That's all fine. But beyond the design is the name itself. The "Green" in the name probably refers to money. In the U.S. paper money bills are called "greenbacks" -- because the U.S. paper currency is mostly green. But in Canada, unless the bank is simply saying "This ATM is painted green," Green Machine is not appropriate because paper money here is not primarily green. Yes, the $20CAN is green, but the other bills are not green in the slightest.

Canadian dollars.

You could argue that most of the bills dispensed from the Green Machine ATMs are green $20CAN bills, but a great deal of red $50CAN bills are also dispensed. 

Red and Green Machine?

On an unrelated tangent, the $20CAN and $50CAN bills are printed on plastic. They have clear stripe areas with hologram stuff going on in the stripes. Kinda fun. And I must say that I've grown fond of the $1CAN and $2CAN coins. They are very handy.


3 comments:

chrisbudel said...

The € also has the 5€ note as the smallest "paper" currency "bill" available.. There are 1€ & 2€ coins and 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 (but not 25, the "quarter" apparently being strictly a North American standard) and 50 ¢ pieces. The seldom-used 500€ note is the green one....

David Steinlicht said...

Chris, Yeah -- the quarter is a bit of a strange duck. If we're going to go with that kind of fraction in the coins, why no $25 dollar bill? No 50-cent coin in Canada (that I know of).

Mark Simonson said...

I seem to recall that Canadian currency used to be mostly green, like U.S. currency.