Goodbye dollar, hello QUID: intergalactic currency proposed

Does it say something about our priorities as a species that before space tourism has even been proven safe for and desirable to the masses, people are already coming up with ways to spend money in zero gravity? Well according to a group of researchers from the University of Leicester and the UK's National Space Centre, the payment methods we use here on Earth would not make for viable space currency -- due to sharp edges or radiation-prone magnetic strips -- and would need to be replaced with something more suited to the environment. Enter the Quasi Universal Intergalactic Denomination (or QUID -- clever Brits), a stackable, molded chip made of the same material used in non-stick pans, and lacking the chemicals or sharpness inherent to paper, plastic, and coins. The inventors peg the current exchange rate for the QUID at £6.25 to 1Q, which seems not only completely arbitrary, but fairly unnecessary, considering that we'll have already spent all our Earth money (and probably re-financed the house) to pay Sir Richard for the damn flight. Keep reading to peep all five colorful denominations...

[Via BBC]

[jaapv @ Oct 8th 2007 11:12AM]

It's so english to come up with a universal currency and call it a quid (slang for pound), peg it to the pound in their attempt to put an english stamp on everything.
But, didn't they vote against a unifying currency the Euro?

[MikeG @ Oct 9th 2007 4:43PM]

Yeah that's mostly because we (brits) didn't invent it and didn't think of it first. :P

[EdZ @ Oct 8th 2007 11:57AM]

Moreover, it's not even a 1:1 exchange rate quid to QUID. Quid Pro Quo, so to speak.

Sorry, the pun potential here is unfathomable.

[omgduck @ Oct 8th 2007 12:08PM]

There has never been a referendum on the euro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_economic_tests

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 12:29PM]

Psst... guys... not trying to rain on your parade but... ever heard of the internets, virtual cash, and all that? I am afraid by the time we need them, your QUIDs will have become Quasi Useless Intergalactic Denominations.

[Mike @ Oct 8th 2007 12:55PM]

@Jean-Michel Decombe
Ummm.... so you're going to wait 32 minutes for the round-trip signal to PayPal from Mars are you? Way to think on a large scale. Did you even read the linked article?

[Cagrino @ Oct 8th 2007 1:00PM]

@Jean-Michel

Yes I agree this is useless, but never underestimate this species' capacity for vices.

And nothing keeps your vices under wraps like good ole' untraceable cash; in any form.

Virtual cash can come but it won't replace cash.

[Cagrino @ Oct 8th 2007 1:02PM]

@Jean-Michel

Yes I agree this is useless, but never underestimate this species' capacity for vices.

And nothing keeps your vices under wraps like good ole' untraceable cash; in any form.

Virtual cash can come but it won't replace cash.

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 1:21PM]

@Mike:
Sorry, the Man doesn't pay me to think on a large scale, he just pays me to say funny things.

Anyway, the limitations you suggest will be overcome. It's nice to think on a large scale but, as history has proven many times over, it's much better to think out of the box.

[Mike @ Oct 8th 2007 1:27PM]

Yes, I'm sure that pesky speed-of-light limitation can be overcome with enough effort. Maybe the Americans can do something constructive along those lines instead of just blowing the crap out of everything on this planet?

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 1:49PM]

Well, I don't want to dwell on that issue forever (there are researchers out there already hard at work brainstorming on the "intergalactic internet", as Vint Cerf dubbed it) but if you can't beat the speed of light, you can still use replication and delayed synchronization to achieve your goals. That is a first trivial, 10-second attempt at thinking of a solution, so I can only imagine that the problem will indeed be solved.

I won't even touch your unfair characterization of what America is all about.

[macona @ Oct 8th 2007 1:53PM]

Where do you think the technology we have now comes from? It was learned from looking for more efficient ways to blow the crap out of everything!

[Ignacio @ Oct 8th 2007 2:03PM]

Yeah, and everybody knows that the galactic currency are "Credits" ;)

[John @ Oct 8th 2007 3:07PM]

@ Cagrino

Untracable cash? Which century are you living in? Both the U.S. and U.K. are printing bills with embedded RFID tags in them. And once the National ID (which will also have RFID) goes live here in the states next year, it will easy to associate cash with people. Just add scanners in the registers' cash drawers linked up to a national database and you'll be able to trace that "untracable" dollar bill all the way back to the mint. The paper trail has been redefined.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/022904rfidtagsexplode.html

[rickane58 @ Oct 8th 2007 6:51PM]

@John

Wow, just wow, do I even need to touch that one?

First off, the RFID in these bills in EURO are not individual, they have 20 ID's, 50 Id's, 100 Id's etc. etc.

Also, the strips in american money are not behind Jacksons eye, but off to the right. Also, the composition of this strip is polyester, a plastic, which would be the WORST anteannae ever.

So plz, from now on before you try to post myth as fact, look it up on trusty ole' snopes. also, a link to the article pertaining to this.

http://http://www.snopes.com/business/money/strip.asp

[Ebzy @ Oct 8th 2007 7:09PM]

Wahay!

At last I get to see my home town mentioned on engadget.

I'm so happy - I think I could just cryyy!

[LiqwidZero @ Oct 8th 2007 11:13AM]

Yeah... I don't see how those would fit in a cash register. Those would get turned down simply for the fact that the whole world would have to throw away cash registers, and that alone would have to be made into it's own landfill. In doing so, the whole world's orbit would shift a degree, stopping 'global warming', pissing Al Gore off so much that he will actually go and hunt down the ever elusive 'ManBearPig', pegging it as the single greatest threat to the UNIVERSE!

[David @ Oct 8th 2007 11:20AM]

You dont need to get rid of registers, if you've ever noticed the part of the register that actually holds the money is just a plastic insert, so replace the inserts. No problem.

[melloncollie @ Oct 8th 2007 11:30AM]

You're an idiot.

[Le Master @ Oct 8th 2007 2:31PM]

I bet you 100 QUID that you're wrong and the QUID will be in our foreseeable future.

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 8th 2007 11:14AM]

So much for small pockets... I wonder if they realize that money will likely not be in the form of physical objects in the future...

And what's up with the "stackable" property assigned to these? They look like they'd fall over if you stacked them.

[Bryan Thornsberry @ Oct 8th 2007 11:18AM]

things fall in zero g?

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 8th 2007 11:54AM]

No, but they definitely float. The "sock" idea they had would hold them together, but you still have the non-flat surfaces and overly fat currency to deal with. It would be like carrying around billiard balls in a sock. Tell me the police wouldn't be keeping a close eye on you if you walked into a bank with a sock full of billiard balls or soap. If they were truly, "stackable" they'd have a flat surface with some sort of attraction method like a magnet or something like Velcro.

[Evil Closet Monkey @ Oct 8th 2007 12:27PM]

>> things fall in zero g?

When in orbit you are in a constant state of free fall. So yes - they'd be falling all over place, along with you... and likely your breakfast if it is your first trip up.

[Mark @ Oct 8th 2007 11:14AM]

Will be great to get a pint of lager for less than a QUID again at least.

[iAlly @ Oct 8th 2007 11:14AM]

Haha. That's pretty cool. And I like the name, QUID.

[iAlly @ Oct 8th 2007 11:40AM]

it does have pretty colors...

[Mike @ Oct 8th 2007 11:22AM]

This is an idiotic idea. The exchange rate is not 6.25 GBP to 1 Quid because Quid is not a real currency, that's just the cost for this plastic piece of $hit. If you think this is a fun idea you're a moron.

[Tommy Crashwreck @ Oct 8th 2007 11:33AM]

Jesus... way to spoil a morning with vehement hate and unbridled, unrequited rage.

That said, I think this definitely sounds more like a joke than a serious research project... I mean, come on, will space money REALLY have a tiny solar system printed on it? At least it's funny.

[TJ @ Oct 8th 2007 11:22AM]

Leave it to the Brits to come up with something useless.

[richard @ Oct 8th 2007 11:25AM]

@TJ
Like America?

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 1:25PM]

Yeah, and what about that stupid Internet, and now the Semantic Web, and who knows what else? Oh wait...

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 1:28PM]

Actually, should have said "that silly Web", not Internet (

[LukeA @ Oct 8th 2007 11:25AM]

I'd just use paper money.

[Marcus @ Oct 8th 2007 11:31AM]

Here Jeff, lend us a couple of hundred quid, I need to fill up the rocket so I can visit the inlaws on Mars.

[aaronbareford @ Oct 8th 2007 11:33AM]

Its funny how anyone outside the UK thinks its stupid, the world hates the UK...
Well we invented the TV, Telephone, Radio etc. and we make better music than the US,
Brits ftw

[Joe @ Oct 8th 2007 11:42AM]

Yes, but how does your music become famous? America
Where do the majority of real motion pictures come from? America

[aaronbareford @ Oct 8th 2007 11:49AM]

Music is famous here in the UK, but because the US is so freakin' huge bands get real big when they make it in America
America may make alot of the films but the only ones i ever see in the charts are the cheesy comedies, or naff action films - mind you saying that i think we do the same.
Still UK ftw

[Andir3.0 @ Oct 8th 2007 11:56AM]

I'm sure there are people in the UK that think it's stupid too.

[Check your facts @ Oct 8th 2007 12:10PM]

You should check your facts before you make comments like that or you look like an idiot.

1 - Invention of television creditted to many individuals, most of which were NOT British

2 - Radio (See number 1)

3 - Telephone inventor was Scottish

[Mark @ Oct 8th 2007 12:14PM]

Scotland is part of the UK

[Alexis @ Oct 8th 2007 12:17PM]

Here are the actual inventers:

TV: Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier (France)

Telephone: debated. Contenders: Antonio Meucci (Italy), Johann Philipp Reis (Germany), Alexander Graham Bell (USA), and Elisha Gray (USA)

Invetion of Radio: Guglielmo Marconi (Italy)

Ignorance, prejudice and megalomania: UK

[matthewlikestoburn @ Oct 8th 2007 12:29PM]

I live in the UK and I don't care what u say about it, or for that matter anything.

Anyway, I like the pretty colours on the new money

[Withad @ Oct 8th 2007 12:37PM]

Actually, all Rignoux and Fournier managed was the transmission of still duotone images, not true television. Credit for that goes to John Logie Baird, a Scot and, thus, a UK citizen.
Anyway, I think George Bernard Shaw summed up the basis of all the arguments here:
"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…"

[Al @ Oct 8th 2007 12:46PM]

Here's the full wikipedia article: Plenty of nationalities to choose from.

The origins of what would become today's television system can be traced back to the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith in 1873, and the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884.

German student Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884. Nipkow's spinning disk design is credited with being the first television image rasterizer. Constantin Perskyi had coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the International World Fair in Paris on August 25, 1900. Perskyi's paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others. The photoconductivity of selenium and Nipkow's scanning disk were first joined for practical use in the electronic transmission of still pictures and photographs, and by the first decade of the 20th century halftone photographs were being transmitted by facsimile over telegraph and telephone lines as a newspaper service.

However, it wasn't until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology made the design practical.[1] The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still duotone images was by Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating mirror-drum as the scanner, and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.[2]

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Kosma Zworykin created a television system that used a mechanical mirror-drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin's words, "very crude images" over wires to the electronic Braun tube (cathode ray tube) in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, "the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy".

On March 25, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave a demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion at Selfridge's Department Store in London. But if television is defined as the transmission of live, moving, half-tone (grayscale) images, and not silhouette, duotone, or still images, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925.[3] Then he gave the world's first public demonstration of a working television system to members of the Royal Institution and a newspaper reporter on January 26, 1926 at his laboratory in London. Unlike later electronic systems with several hundred lines of resolution, Baird's vertically scanned image, using a scanning disk embedded with a double spiral of lenses, had only 30 lines, just enough to reproduce a recognizable human face.

In 1927 Baird transmitted a signal over 438 miles of telephone line between London and Glasgow. In 1928 Baird's company (Baird Television Development Company / Cinema Television) broadcast the first transatlantic television signal, between London and New York, and the first shore-to-ship transmission. He also demonstrated an electromechanical color, infrared (dubbed "Noctovision"), and stereoscopic television, using additional lenses, disks and filters. In parallel he developed a video disk recording system dubbed "Phonovision"; a number of the Phonovision [1] recordings, dating back to 1927, still exist. In 1929 he became involved in the first experimental electromechanical television service in Germany. In 1931 he made the first live transmission, of the Epsom Derby. In 1932 he demonstrated ultra-short wave television. Baird's electromechanical system reached a peak of 240 lines of resolution on BBC television broadcasts in 1936, before being discontinued in favor of a 405-line all-electronic system developed by Marconi-EMI.

In the U.S., Charles Francis Jenkins was able to demonstrate on June 13, 1925, the transmission of the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion from a naval radio station to his laboratory in Washington, using a lensed disk scanner with 48 lines per picture, 16 pictures per second. AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories transmitted half-tone images of transparencies in May 1925.

However, Herbert E. Ives of Bell Labs gave the most dramatic demonstration of television yet on April 7, 1927, when he field tested reflected-light television systems using small-scale (2 by 2.5 inches) and large-scale (24 by 30 inches) viewing screens over a wire link from Washington to New York City, and over-the-air broadcast from Whippany, New Jersey. The subjects, who included Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, were illuminated by a flying-spot scanner beam that was scanned by a 50-aperture disk at 16 pictures per second.


[edit] Electronic television
In 1911, engineer Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton gave a speech in London, reported in The Times, describing in great detail how distant electric vision could be achieved by using cathode ray tubes at both the transmitting and receiving ends. The speech, which expanded on a letter he wrote to the journal Nature in 1908, was the first iteration of the electronic television method that is still used today. Others had already experimented with using a cathode ray tube as a receiver, but the concept of using one as a transmitter was novel.[4] By the late 1920s, when electromechanical television was still being introduced, inventors Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin were already working separately on versions of all-electronic transmitting tubes.

The decisive solution — television operating on the basis of continuous electron emission with accumulation and storage of released secondary electrons during the entire scansion cycle — was first described by the Hungarian inventor Kálmán Tihanyi in 1926, with further refined versions in 1928.

On September 7, 1927, Philo Farnsworth's Image Dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. [2] By 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press, televising a motion picture film. In 1929, the system was further improved by elimination of a motor generator, so that his television system now had no mechanical moving parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images by his television system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Pem with her eyes closed (possibly due to the bright lighting required).

Farnsworth gave the world's first public demonstration of a complete all-electronic television system on 25 August 1934 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Other inventors had previously demonstrated components of such a system, or had shown an electronic system using still images or motion picture film. But Farnsworth was the first to coordinate both electronically scanned television cameras and electronically scanned television receivers, and present live, moving, half-tone (grayscale) images with them. Unfortunately, his cameras needed too much light, so his work came to a stop.

Vladimir Zworykin was also experimenting with the cathode ray tube to create and show images. In 1931 he and his team at RCA created their first successful electronic camera tube, dubbed the Iconoscope. Farnsworth believed it to interfere with the 1927 patent for his image dissector, and in a 1935 decision the U.S. Patent Office examiner agreed, finding prior art for Farnsworth against Zworykin. In November 1939, after losing in the courts, RCA gave Farnsworth a check for $1 million (USD) (the equivalent of $13.8 million (USD) in 2006) in order to license Farnsworth's patents.

In Britain Isaac Shoenburg used Zworykin's idea to develop Marconi-EMI's own Emitron tube, which formed the heart of the cameras they designed for the BBC. Using this, on November 2, 1936 a 405 line service was started from studios at Alexandra Palace, and transmitted from a specially-built mast atop one of the Victorian building's towers; it alternated for a short time with Baird's mechanical system in adjoining studios, but was more reliable and visibly superior. So began the world's first high-definition regular service. The mast is still in use today.

[aaronbareford @ Oct 8th 2007 1:24PM]

Wow, i wasn't expecting that response lol
Anyway, i DO think the money is stupid.

@Alexis - Why say "Ignorance, prejudice and megalomania: britain" You had to make an attack at the country, you think britain is prejudice? We have tons of people from all over the world living in britain, we get along fine with them! And megalomania - where are you from?

As for the invetions thing, it seems everyone has there own thoughts on it, apologies if i got it wrong...

[Xzavier @ Oct 8th 2007 1:28PM]

Al @ Oct 8th 2007 12:46PM

Such a long post and a total wast of real estate.

Next time post your comment and then post the link/reference to your comment underneath it or your post will be removed!

[Al @ Oct 8th 2007 2:49PM]

@aaronbareford : Yes, my post is just a stupid insult. I spend too much time on the internet.

One caveat though: there is surprisingly little information about other countries available in England (I am discounting the constant bombardment of US=stupid/Germany=Nazis/France=lazy epicurians), and this leads to negative side effects.

[aaronbareford @ Oct 8th 2007 3:15PM]

@Al
Britains past is horrible really, it givees us bad rep now. Our history lessons are full of how bad we have been with slave trade, and wars etc. The world wars are covered very biased though.
Media in the UK does take the piss out of france alot :) Id say britains view of america is more that they are a bit "we are the only country that matters" or "we are the world, what europe? Is it a city or type of food?"

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Oct 8th 2007 4:30PM]

I'm not exactly sure who invented what and where, but I'm pretty sure they were all human.