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1 Pound Royal Bank of Scotland - Alexander Graham Bell
| Issuer | Royal Bank of Scotland |
|---|---|
| Year | 1997 |
| Type | Commemorative banknote |
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| Reverse description | A large intaglio portrait of Alexander Graham Bell in profile dominates the left and centre of the note, surrounded by a richly composed vignette incorporating scenes from his life and work — including figures in conversation, sheep referencing his acoustic research with the deaf, soaring birds, sound wave patterns, and technical diagrams of communications apparatus. The name "ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL" appears in mirror-reversed lettering along the lower centre, a deliberate design motif referencing his visual experiments, while "The Royal Bank of Scotland plc" runs vertically along the right margin. |
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| Protection type | Watermark, Hologram |
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| Comments |
The Royal Bank of Scotland issued this commemorative pound as part of a short run honoring Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh in 1847. Bell is claimed by both Scotland and Canada with some regularity, but his foundational telephone work was done in Boston, funded partly by the fathers of two deaf students he was teaching — a detail that rarely makes it into the celebratory literature surrounding him.
De La Rue produced the note with a hologram strip, relatively new security infrastructure for a £1 at the time. Scotland's £1 note survived long after the Bank of England abandoned its equivalent, and commemorative designs like this one kept the denomination commercially viable into the late 1990s.