50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford

To this manufacture, the queen was pleased to give her name and patronage, commanding

it to be called Queen's Ware, and honoring the inventor by appointing him her Majesty's

Potter. At least that was Josiah Wedgwood's story. His biographer, Brian Doleann, reckons

it's more likely that Queen Charlotte's command was Wedgwood's suggestion. She probably

saw it more as flattery than shrewd self-interest. Why more likely? Because Josiah Wedgwood was

a shrewd individual. He was perhaps the world's first management accountant as we heard

in this show's first series. He was a pioneering early chemist, endlessly experimenting with

new ways to treat and fire clay, and noting his results in a secret code less than a rival

steal his notebook. His first big breakthrough? The new kind of creamware or cream coloured

pottery from which he had fashioned the tea service that so impressed the queen.

He noted modestly, covered with a rich and brilliant glaze. Wedgwood was a lobbyist. In

the 1760s, North Staffordshire Potters had to dispatch their fragile wares over miles

of bone-shaking, pot-breaking roads to get to major cities. Wedgwood roused investors

and persuaded Parliament to approve a canal connecting the Trent and the Mercy, two major

English rivers. His fellow potters were delighted, until they realised that Josiah had

cannelly snapped up land and built his enormous new factory right on the banks of where the

canal would pass. But perhaps Josiah's most impressive achievement was solving a problem

in monopoly theory, two centuries before it was even articulated. The man who put the

problem into words was a Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist called Ronald Kose.

Imagine, said Kose, that you're a monopolist. You alone produce a certain good. Many people

want to buy it, some would pay a lot, others much less, but still enough for you to turn

...