50 Things That Made The Modern Economy

With Tim Harford

We've got four more of our 50 things that made the modern economy to come.

But as you know, over the last few weeks on the podcast, we've been asking you for a

51st thing, one extra idea, something you couldn't bear me not to discuss in a spectacular

final episode. More than 500 suggestions have arrived in the 51 things in box. Thank

you to everybody who contributed.

In this special episode of the podcast, I'll introduce a short list of six of my personal

favourites that I've chosen from the suggestions. After you've listened to the short list, please

do vote for the one you're most likely to hear explored in more depth. That will form

a bonus extra episode of 50 things that made the modern economy, which you'll be able

to hear on the 28th of October 2017. Details about how to vote coming up at the end of the

podcast.

The first option of our six traces its history to 1960 in Minnesota in the United States.

Dorothea Parry was ironing when her husband, Forest, came home from work at the computer

giant IBM. How was his day? Well, he had a problem. IBM had worked out how to encode information

on magnetic strips. They wanted to fix the strips to plastic cards, but he couldn't figure

out how. Dorothea could, she ironed them on.

The addition of the magnetic strip was a huge boost for credit cards which were just a few

years old and struggling for acceptance. Merchants, shown a diner's club or American Express

card, had to phone the bank. IBM's magnetic strip paved the way for a far less cumbersome

approach. The new credit cards were pushed aggressively and people soon found that having

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