Where's George??

Today at lunchtime, my workmates and I stumbled across something that all but one of us had heard of - a thing called Where's George - and an associated e-mail address - www.wheresgeorge.com. Where did we come across this? Well, one of my colleagues was handed a dollar note in her change with the Where's George stamp on. She pointed it out to us all - and proceeded to elaborate. Y'see, someone somewhere thought it would be interesting to track the flow of money around the country and so there are a certain number of stamped bills in circulation (the website says a few million). Whenever you get one, you can log into the website and set up an account (if you haven't already done so), thus allowing you to enter the 10 digit code on the bill. This will then provide information to the people in question - but also gives you access to cool information as to where the bill has been and how long it has taken to travel.

As Kellie offered to let me input the bill, i did so - and found that this was actually the first time that it had been logged in since the stamp had been put on it. In this case, it had made it's way to Charleston from the other side of the state and had taken 82 days to get here - coming out at an average 'speed' of 2.1 miles a day. Thus, the bill goes back into circulation and at some point in the future will hopefully get inputted in again. As an example of the 'lifetime' of a dollar bill, they show you the story of one such note that started in New England and went across the country and back again. Twice. In the space of about three years. Pretty good going. Incidentally, for those of you wondering why it's Where's George, the answer is simple - George Washington is on the 1 dollar bill.