Take an online tour – Research Notes & News – Atlanta’s Visitors Center and Monetary Museum – Brief Article
This spring the Atlanta Fed launched an online tour of its Visitors Center and Monetary Museum. The virtual tour “walks” Internet visitors through the central exhibits of the museum, which present the story of money’s evolution from barter to modern currency, focusing particularly on money and banking in America. Ancient Greek coins, African throwing knives, Chinese shoe money, and wampum are just a few examples of the rare and unique artifacts, coins, and currency on display.
The virtual tour of the Visitors Center continues with photos and information about the bank’s inter-active and multimedia exhibits. These exhibits offer an in-depth look at the role of the Federal Reserve in the U.S. economy: how and why the Fed conducts monetary policy, the Fed’s role in bank supervision and regulation, and the ways the Fed provides payment system services.
The online exhibits also introduce visitors to the bank’s cash processing operations, where millions of dollars are counted and sorted each day. This portion of the tour offers a glimpse of the bank’s automated vault, a look at the robotic transports that do the heavy lifting of cash and coins, and a close-up view of a currency transport, or cash bus.
For security reasons, the Atlanta Fed currently offers only pre-arranged, guided tours of its facility to school and business groups. But through the online tour, the bank is able to make its Visitors Center and Monetary Museum available to a much broader audience–anyone who has access to the Internet.
Take the virtual tour of the Atlanta Fed’s Visitors Center and Monetary Museum at www.frbatlanta.org/atlantafed/visitors_center/vc_index.cfm.
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