So many phases of consummate skill are necessary to the completion of a single dollar note, that “many men of many minds” are required to perfect a single plate. One has a genius for landscape, another for portraits, another for animal figures. The portrait is given to one, the lettering to another, the ornamental work to a third, and on and on. These fragments of the perfect picture to be, are executed upon separate bits of soft steel. When the lines on them are completed, these different bits of soft steel are put into an iron box, case-hardened and annealed in a crucible of intense heat, then suddenly cooled by dipping them in oil, which utterly hardens the soft steel. Rolls of soft steel are then prepared. By the application of a powerful press, the various pictures and lines, that the artists have engraved, are taken up by the soft steel rollers from the hard steel plate. The intaglio work appears on the roll, just as it afterwards appears on the note. Now, the note-face is in fragments on the surface of the separate rolls. Next, the rolls are hardened, and placed in a transfer press over a flat plate of soft steel. Upon this plate, the operator of the press, by applying the lever, can, if necessary, impose a pressure equal to five or six tons. This pressure transfers the fragmentary picture to the plate. Then its counterpart picture is set in exact juxtaposition. The operator uses his steady hand, and skilled eyes, to set like a mosaic, each fragment of the complete design. Then moving the roller softly, to and fro, to equalize the pressure on every part of the picture, he continues to do so till the plate is hardened. He then passes a soft roll over it, and the entire note-face is taken up. In turn, this roll is hardened, and the note-face transferred from it to a soft steel plate. This final plate, hardened and polished, is the plate from which the note is at last printed. After this plate has been used for thirty thousand impressions, its fading lines are restored by “re-entering” the plate with a roll. It is then used for thirty thousand impressions more. When finally “used up,” these plates are destroyed in the presence of a mixed committee of Treasury officers and members of Congress.