Making the next-gen Benjamin (photos)

At the beginning of the production process of the new $100 bill, the future currency is no more than special paper. Here, large stacks of the paper sit on a pallet at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington D.C. Many of the anti-counterfeiting features that the bureau has designed into the new bill come embedded in the paper.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

The first step in the production process is known as "offset," and it is where the bills' background colors are printed.

Here, in offset, a worker inspects a couple of sheets that have just come off the presses, looking for any kinds of defects.

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One of the first sets of features to be added to the bills are these, which include a feather pen; an inkwell; the date July 4, 1776; and several other elements, all of which are designed to make it more difficult to counterfeit the bills.

The next step in the process is known as "intaglio," where the first lettering is printed, along with the bills' faces and backs.

Here, we see sheets of bills coming off the presses, where the backs have just been printed.

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Here, we see stacks of bills with their backs having just been printed being sorted and collected in the presses.

After each round of printing, the bills are set aside to dry for 72 hours before moving on to the next step.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Here, we see sheets--each of which come off the presses with 32 bills--that have had their backs fully printed, but which have not had the major elements of their fronts done yet.

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This is what is known as a "smear sheet," which is used by the technicians to look and see what is missing from a print job. By examining the smear sheet, they can see if the patterns that are supposed to be on every sheet have been printed properly.

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Assistant supervisor Bob Smith examines sheets that have had their backs printed. Once they've dried for 72 hours, they will be moved to the face printing press.

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Now, we've reached the point in the process where the bills have gone through offset, dried for 72 hours, had their backs printed, dried for another 72 hours, and are now getting the faces printed. Here, we see the sheets--still with 32 bills per sheet--coming off the press.

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The sheets, now with their faces, collect in a hopper in the printing presses, and a Bureau employee prepares to pull them out.

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Here, the same worker holds up a sheet that has now had the faces (of Benjamin Franklin) printed on them. She's looking for defects in the bills.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

This might be a highly-engineered, tightly-monitored process, but a printing press is a printing press, and there are still going to be paper jams, such as the one that is being cleared out of the machine here.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Here, the machine separates good sheets from bad. The determination is made automatically by a computer that scans the sheets. If the computer senses a defect, the sheet is automatically directed straight through here, while good sheets are routed upwards. About 85 percent of the sheets are determined to be good at this point.

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Sheets that have been determined to have defects are routed to a bin with an appropriate label: "Mutts."

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

While the sheets have gone most of the way through the process, and now have both the fronts and backs printed on them, they still don't have their seals and serial numbers.

Here, we see the Treasury Department seals in the printing press. The sheets pass through and have the seals imprinted on them.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Now that the sheets have gotten their Treasury Department seals, they need their serial numbers. When they pass through this part of the press, they'll get the serial numbers printed on them.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Each sheet has 32 bills, but toward the end of the production process, they are first cut in half down the middle, meaning that they are now in two sheets of 16 bills. Then, they go through this part of the process, where they are first cut into two stacks, and then a single stack.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Now, for the first time in the process, we have actual $100 bills, and here, we see a technician examining stacks of a hundred of them, looking for defects. If any stack of 100 has a defect, the entire stack will be pulled out, destroyed, and replaced with bills that have stars printed at the end of their serial numbers to denote that they are replacements for defects.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Here, we see two bills in a sheet of 32 that have had stars printed at the end of their serials numbers to denote that they are replacements.

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This is a newly-printed stack of one hundred $100 bills, meaning that it's a total of $10,000.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Here, the stacks of bills are wrapped in plastic.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Ten stacks of $10,000 are put together, making this pile worth $100,000.

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

Here, we see the stacks with $100,000 rotated around as they are prepared to be bundled together in much larger "bricks."

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.

This is a brick of $100 bills. It has 4,000 bills, meaning that this brick contains $400,000. Twenty-four of the bricks are put together into what is called a "skid."

Click here to read the related behind-the-scenes story on the production of the next-generation $100 bill. And click here to check out the entire Road Trip 2010 package.