50 Franken

The Zürcher Kantonalbank was established by cantonal law in 1870, making this 50 Franken note a first-year issue from an institution that was itself brand new. Swiss cantonal banks operated as state-guaranteed entities, and Zürich's version was among the most aggressively capitalized at launch — the canton's industrial economy demanded serious liquidity infrastructure, not symbolic gestures.

Printed locally in Zürich rather than farmed out to the major European security printers, which was the more common route for Swiss cantonal notes of this period. Whether that reflects civic pride or practical urgency is an open question, but locally printed Swiss cantonal issues from the 1870s are considerably harder to locate than contemporaneous De La Rue or Bradbury Wilkinson productions.