“There is a lot of mythology around the design of the note,” says Bill Maurer, Ph.D., an anthropology professor at the University of California, Irvine and an expert on the history of money. ... The United States’ first president, George Washington, has been on the front side of the one-dollar bill since 1869, Maurer says. ... Leaves appear in multiple places on the front side of the dollar bill, including around the border as well as at the bottom of Washington’s portrait. These are laurel leaves, according to Maurer, which are “associated with honor and wisdom—and also military victory, which is relevant for General Washington.” ... “The use of fine lines in the patterns in the spaces around the numbers indicating the note’s denomination is called guilloché,” Maurer says. As it turns out, many countries’ banknotes use this kind of design feature as a form of counterfeit deterrence, he explains. “But what’s fun about it is that it derives from metalwork, not printing,” he says. “Our notes are produced from engraved sheets of metal; the people at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing are skilled engravers who pass on techniques from generation to generation to make the plates from which the notes are printed.”

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