50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

Murderers in early 19th century London feared surviving their executions. That’s because their bodies were often handed to scientists for strange anatomical experiments. If George Foster, executed in 1803, had woken up on the lab table, it would have been in particularly undignified circumstances. In front of a large London crowd, an Italian scientist with a flair for showmanship was sticking an electrode up Foster’s rectum. This is how the story of the battery begins – a technology which has been truly revolutionary. As Tim Harford explains, it’s a story which is far from over.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Used Batteries, Credit: Gerard Julien/Getty Images)

Take a very large prime number – one that is not divisible by anything other than itself. Then take another. Multiply them together. That is simple enough, and it gives you a very, very large “semi-prime” number. That is a number that is divisible only by two prime numbers. Now challenge someone else to take that semi-prime number, and figure out which two prime numbers were multiplied together to produce it. That, it turns out, is exceptionally hard. Some mathematics are a lot easier to perform in one direction than another. Public key cryptography works by exploiting this difference. And without it we would not have the internet as we know it. Tim Harford tells the story of public key cryptography – and the battle between the geeks who developed it, and the government which tried to control it.(Photo: Encryption algorithms. Credit: Shutterstock)

Robots threaten the human workforce, but their ubiquity and growing competence make them crucial to the modern economy. In 1961 General Motors installed the first Unimate at one of its plants. It was a one-armed robot resembling a small tank that was used for tasks like welding. Now, as Tim Harford explains, the world’s robot population is expanding rapidly (the robot “birth rate” is almost doubling every five years) and, coupled with rapid advances in artificial intelligence, robots are changing the world of work in unexpected ways.(Photo: Robot, Credit: Toru Yamanaka/Getty Images)

King Camp Gillette came up with an idea which has helped shape the modern economy. He invented the disposable razor blade. But, perhaps more significantly, he invented the two-part pricing model which works by imposing what economists call “switching costs”. If you’ve ever bought replacement cartridges for an inkjet printer you experienced both when you discovered that they cost almost as much as the printer itself. It’s also known as the “razor and blades” model because that’s where it first drew attention, thanks to King Camp Gillette. Attract people with a cheap razor, then repeatedly charge them for expensive replacement blades. As Tim Harford explains, it’s an idea which has been remarkably influential.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Razor, Credit: Shutterstock)

There’s no such thing as “the correct time”. Like the value of money, it’s a convention that derives its usefulness from the widespread acceptance of others. But there is such a thing as accurate timekeeping. That dates from 1656, and a Dutchman named Christiaan Huygens. In the centuries since, as Tim Harford explains, the clock has become utterly essential to almost every area of the modern economy.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: A wall clock. Credit: Shutterstock)

The words 'clever' and 'death' crop up less often than 'Google' in conversation. That’s according to researchers at the University of Lancaster in the UK. It took just two decades for Google to reach this cultural ubiquity. Larry Page and Sergey Brin – Google’s founders – were not, initially, interested in designing a better way to search. Their Stanford University project had a more academic motivation. Tim Harford tells the extraordinary story of a technology which might shape our access to knowledge for generations to come.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Google logo and search box on a screen. Credit: Yui Mok/PA Wire)

Legally and culturally, there’s a clear distinction between gambling and insurance. Economically, the difference is not so easy to see. Both the gambler and the insurer agree that money will change hands depending on what transpires in some unknowable future. Today the biggest insurance market of all – financial derivatives – blurs the line between insuring and gambling more than ever. Tim Harford tells the story of insurance; an idea as old as gambling but one which is fundamental to the way the modern economy works.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Lloyds Coffeehouse, Credit: Getty Images)

The Gutenberg printing press is widely considered to be one of humanity’s defining inventions. Actually, you can quibble with Gutenberg’s place in history. He wasn’t the first to invent a movable type press – it was originally developed in China. Still the Gutenberg press changed the world. It led to Europe’s reformation, science, the newspaper, the novel, the school textbook, and much else. But, as Tim Harford explains, it could not have done so without another invention, just as essential but often overlooked: paper. Paper was another Chinese idea, just over 2000 years ago.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Stack of coloured paper, Credit: Laborant/Shutterstock)

In 1928 a young bacteriologist named Alexander Fleming failed to tidy up his petri dishes before going home to Scotland on holiday. On his return, he famously noticed that one dish had become mouldy in his absence, and the mould was killing the bacteria he’d used the dish to cultivate. It’s hard to overstate the impact of antibiotics on medicine, farming and the way we live. But, as Tim Harford explains, the story of antibiotics is a cautionary one. And unhelpful economic incentives are in large part to blame.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon(Image: Penicillin Fungi, Credit: Science Photo/Shutterstock)

Low cost, functional and brilliantly efficient, an Ikea Billy bookcase rolls off the production line every three seconds. There are thought to be over 60 million of them already in service. Few could find the Billy bookcase beautiful. They are successful because they work and they are cheap. And – as Tim Harford explains in this fascinating story – brilliantly boring efficiency is essential to the modern economy. The humble Billy bookcase epitomises the relentless pursuit of lower costs and acceptable functionality.Producer: Ben Crighton Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon