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Where's George? is a website that tracks American paper money. It has grown sufficiently popular that it has led to the establishment of a number of other currency tracking websites, as well as sites that track other objects, such as used books, and it has been used in at least one research paper, to provide statistical patterns of human travel in the U.S.
Overview
The site was established in December 1998 by Hank Eskin, a computer consultant in Brookline, Massachusetts. To track a bill, a user enters his or her local ZIP Code and the serial number and series of any United States denomination. Once a bill is registered, the site reports the time between sightings, the distance traveled between locations, as well as any comments from the finders (called "user notes"). Any bills dated 1963 or later can be tracked.
To increase the chance of having a bill reported, users (called "Georgers") write or stamp text on the bills encouraging bill finders to visit www.wheresgeorge.com and track the bill's travels. However, the site does not encourage the defacement of U.S. Currency. In December 1999 and January 2000, it was investigated by the United States Secret Service, who informed the webmaster that the selling of "Where's George?" rubber stamps on the web site could be considered using United States currency for "advertising", which is illegal. The web site immediately ceased selling rubber stamps and no further action against the site was deemed necessary.
The name Where's George? refers to George Washington, whose portrait appears on the one dollar bill. Denominations besides the $1 can also be tracked via the website, although dollar bills are by far the most popular, followed by 20-dollar bills. The deceptively uncommon States two-dollar bill|American $2 bill" target="_blank" >* is popular among a niche of site users.
Hits
Where's George? does not have a specific goal, but many players like to collect interesting patterns of hits, called bingos. The most common bingo involves getting at least one hit in all 50 states (appropriately called "50 state bingo"). Also popular is FRB bingo, which involves getting hits on bills from all 12 Federal Reserve Banks.
Most bills do not receive any response, or hits, but many bills receive two or more hits. Double and triple-hitters are common, and bills with 4 or 5 hits are not unheard of. The site record is held by a $1 bill with 15 hits.
Where's George? is supported by advertising, sales of T-shirts and other memorabilia, and by users who pay a fee for extra features.
Where's George? has influenced many other currency bill tracking websites.
Where's George? was also the inspiration for the BookCrossing website, which tracks used books.
Where's George? and geocaching
The phenomenon of geocaching, in which small items are left in obscure places for others to find using GPS systems, has resulted in a problem. Some geocachers leave Where's George? bills, which can artificially inflate the number of hits for that bill and disrupt the intent of the site, to track money's natural movement.
The Where's George? site says it "prohibits trading or exchanging bills with friends, family or anyone known to the bill distributor. This rule is to encourage 'natural circulation' of the currency, and to prevent multiple 'fake hits' from happening on any bill." As a result, all bills containing the word "geocache" are tagged as a geocache bill. The site has also dropped a separate listing of "Top 10 Geocache bills" and is cautioning that if geocache sites are used too often, "all Geocache bills will be removed from this site."
"George Score"
The "George Score" is a method of rating users based on how many bills they have entered and also by how many total hits they have had. The formula is as follows:
This logarithmic formula means that the more bills a user enters and the more hits the user receives, the less the user's score increases for each entered bill or new hit. Thus, a user's score does not increase as quickly when the user has entered many bills. A very good George Score is over 1,000. The #1 user, Wattsburg Gary, has a George Score of over 1,500.
Although there is a scoring system, the site makes it clear that this is not intended to be a contest.
Use in research
Although Where's George? does not officially recognize the bills that travel the farthest or fastest, some have approached it as a semi-serious way to track patterns in the flow of American cash.
Money flow displayed through Where's George was used in a 2006 research paper that described statistical laws of human travel in the United States, and developed a mathematical model of the spread of infectious disease resulting from such travel. The article is in the January 26 issue of the journal Nature.
References
External links
- Where's George? web site
- Directory of Where's George related pages - a wealth of information regarding Where's George
- Cash Trail - an article in Forbes magazine about Where's George.
- Where's George stamps from Stamp Connection
"Where's George?"