What did the Bank of England pound notes featuring Isaac Newton have almost all the letters of the alphabet scattered around the reverse side? Which letter was missing?

For "What" read "Why" and knock an "s" out of "almosst" whilst I write out 100 times "I will ask my questions before visiting the pub".

Well, gmack, the only thing I know about this note is that in the orbital diagram, the sun is mistakenly placed at the center rather than at a focus of an ellipse. I can't find an illustration that allows me to read the letters properly, and I even dragged out a magnifying glass to look at the "bigger picture" available on the site below -- but to no avail.

Of course, this could just be a matter of creeping deterioration of my eyesight. Someone else might have better luck:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/PictDisplay/Newton.html

Such is the nature of pixels that even though the bigger picture is about twice the length and width of the real thing, the scattered letters are more legible on the original note.
I don't actually know this but it always puzzled me at the time (they ceased to be legal tender in 1988 and since 1983 we have had pound coins instead).

As regards the solar placement, the Earth's orbit isn't really eccentric enough to appear elliptical at that scale anyway.

Incidentally, the newest letter of our alphabet, J, was missing.
I'm still clueless as to why the £1 note had the other 25 letters scattered round it though.

Oh simple
1)To prevent forgery and
2)mathematics looks like geometry and optics combined. (don't know why j is missing though :))