Rupee (₹)
Sher Shah Suri was the person responsible for the Rupee. His version of Re 1 in 1540 AD weighed 11.5 grams of silver and was divided into 40 copper pieces or paisa. By the time the British East India Company entered the market in the 1600s, Sher Shah's silver rupee had already become the standard currency atleast in name. Despite many attempts to bring the Sterling Pound to India, the Rupee grew in popularity and was even exported as a currency to other British colonies.
And when the British government took over the company territories after the 1857 revolt, the Rupee became the official currency of colonial India, with the head of King George VI featuring prominently on banknotes and coins. In 1947, India became an independent nation. The currency kept its name but changed visually to account of the birth of this new nation.
How is the Rupee made?
* There are 4 mints that produce legal tender in India. They are in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Noida.
* Indian banknotes are made of a balsam wood pulp. Cotton fibres are added to pulp to make it more durable than regular paper.
* The whole note is then infused with gelatin to give it extra strength. Using watermark technology, an image of Mahatma Gandhi is imprinted onto the sheet during making process.
* Before the paper dries, a silver thread with holographic imagery is woven into it. The watermark and silver thread make the notes very difficult to replicate.
The Rupee symbol ₹
* The Rupee symbol is a recent development in the history of Indian currency. Until 2009, the word rupee on a banknote was shortened to 'Rs.' to represent Indian currency. The Indian government, Ministry of Finance held a competition for graphic designers to develop a symbol to represent the currency.
* The winning graphic was a symbol that looks like the Devanagari 'Ra' as well as the English 'R'. The symbol was an instant success and soon became the standard representation of the rupee.
The symbol was conceptualised and designed by D. Udaya Kumar, a post graduate in Design from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
* MRPs and advertisements quickly took to using it and in January 2012 the government issued coinage and banknotes that featured the symbol.
