$ 50 note with typo

Australia was the first country to release polymer-based banknotes (plastic money). Meanwhile, there is the second generation of these bank-notes. The latest issue is the $ 50 note. It is the most commonly used banknote in Australia.

For this reason, the security features have now been improved so significantly. The $ 50-dollar note is a marvel of modern technology.

It’s light. It’s tough. It is incredibly hard to fake.

And it has a typo.

And nobody has noticed it before.

The typographical error is in the word “Responsibility”, which was discovered only months after the distribution of 46 million banknotes.

Under a magnifying glass you can see the typo in microscopic text on the note just above the shoulder of the depicted woman (Edith Cowan) on one side of the note.

In the text taken from Edith Cowan’s first speech to the Western Australian Parliament in 1921, the word “responsibility” lacks the third “i” and is “Responsibilty”.

The excerpt appears three times on the banknote, each misspelled in the same way:

“It is a great responsibilty to be the only woman here, and I want to emphasise the necessity which exists for other women being here. …”

A spokesman for the Royal Bank of Australia said the mistake would be corrected in the next edition of the notes and put into circulation around the end of 2019.

46 million notes with typos

The new $ 50 note was introduced in February 2018 and went in circulation in October 2018. The edition amounted to 46 million (!) Banknotes worth 2.3 billion US dollars.

Concentrating on all the new security features, one probably forgot to run the spell checker over the text, or had no money left for it.

Or nobody had the responsibilty …

Given that there are more notes in circulation than the country of almost 25 million has citizens, it is less likely that the banknote will be sought after by collectors. At least the typo is almost certain to secure Australia a spot in the hall of fame of currency blunders.