- Author
- Collins, B. L.
- Title
- Visual Assessmentof Holograms.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
- Sponsor
- Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC
- Report
- NBSIR 86-3409, July 1986, 42 p.
- Distribution
- Not Available from National Technical Information Service
- Keywords
- banknotes | counterfiet | currency | detection | hologram | identification | optically variable devices | wear
- Abstract
- At the request of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, NBS performed an assessment of the effectiveness of holograms intended for use as security devices on banknotes. Five holograms containing different portraits and counters were hotstamped on banknote currency of five different denominations. Each of the sixty-six banknotes, including 6 counterfeited holograms were then subjected to one of six wear tests-pristine, chemical soak, laundering, one crumple, two crumple, and four crumple. Thirty observers then participated in a visual performance experimment in which they detected the image, counter, and seal in each hologram, matched the image and counter to the portrait and counter on the note, rated the quality of each hologram, and indicated if it were genuine or counterfeit. The results indicated that wear adversely affected the performance of the holograms, with all wear conditions except chemical soak resulting in significantly poorer performance than the pristine condition, well below the criterion of 80 percent accuracy. Correlations with a physical measure of hologram quality, diffraction efficiency, were strongest for the rated quality measures, and were above 0.80 for image data. The data indicate strongly that the holograms studied could not pass standard wear tests that coanventional banknote currency regularly does.