Create an Unscanable Letter

Some time ago I’ve heard about the EURion constellation. Never heard about it? Has nothing to do with stars or astrology. It’s the thing on your money! :)

Take a closer look at your bills and you’ll discover plenty of EURions, as shown in the picture on the right. Just a few inconspicuous dots. So what’s it all about? The EURion constellation is a pattern to be recognized by imaging software, so that it can recognize banknotes. It was invented to prevent people from copying money :)

But I don’t know of any law that prohibits using that EURion, so I’ve been playing around with it. Took me some trials to find the optimal size, but I was able to create a \(LaTeX\) document that includes the EURion. That’s the essential tex code:

wanna scan my letter?
\includegraphics[width=7mm]{EURion.pdf}

The whole \(LaTeX\) environment can be found on GitHub, together with the EURion image and stuff. I also provide the resulting letter.

Of course I immediately asked some friends to try to scan the letter, but it turns out, that not all scanners/printers are aware of the EURion… So it’s a bit disappointing, but I learned another thing. Good good. And to be honest, I do not have a good use case. Why should I prevent someone from printing my letters? Maybe photographers can use the EURion in their images. Copyright bullshit or something…