What Invention Deserves Way More Credit Than We Give It?

and fill it with pudding, right, yeah, exactly. I mean I've had this vision for years and one day, I mean, this is probably when I retire, but I'm determined to do this. I don't know how much it costs to buy one of these trucks new, but we'll figure that out in the future. But I'm determined to make this thing work. And you know, I'm planning to compete with the ice cream truck. I mean, go head to head

with the ice cream truck. I want to drive around neighborhoods, but you know, instead, the pudding will come pouring down that cement shoot. Kids will just hold their hands out and the pudding will just like rush into them, and the people are gonna love it. I've just I've got to figure out how to pass the health code stuff first, but but again I'll figure that out later. Yeah, those

minor details. So I know it's brilliant, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to call it an invention, and especially when I think about all the cool stuff we read about this week. I mean, I I certainly don't want to crush your dreams. You should, you should definitely pursue this, but we should probably also talk about some of the most important inventions that shaped the modern economy. What do you say? All right, well, one day I

think you'll understand more mango, But all right, let's get started. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend men Guestow, Ticketter and the man on the other side of the soundproof class who's giving us not one but two thumbs up. Thanks Tristan as our producer, Tristan McNeil. And today we're looking at some of the revolutionary ideas and breakthrough innovations that have helped make our economy what

it is today. I mean, it's kind of crazy when you stop and think about how quickly humanity has gone from scattered, nomadic tribe to this current information based age, and of course a few things have happened in between. But it's pretty amazing to think about all this progress. Even the concept of money is, you know, what it looks like, what it can buy for us, All that

has changed along the way too. And all this rapid evolution is due in no small part to some very unexpected consequences, you know, the surprising, often life changing impacts of a few key people and ideas and inventions. And so that's what we're planning to cover today. Yeah, and we should definitely say upfront that today's episode is a

little different than most. The theme and content is directly inspired by a new book out this month called Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, and our guest is actually the best selling author of that book, Tim Harford. So Tim is a rare cripple threat. He's an author, broadcaster, and an economists so we're super excited to talk to him and see what juicy details he has about about

the world economy. Yeah, and it probably sounds a little strange to some of our listeners to hear us talking about the juicy details. I mean, it sounds a little strange to me, to be honest. Yeah, so you mean the fact that economics can be interesting pretty much? Yeah. I mean a lot of people assume economics is this extremely complex and therefore unapproachable science, and you know, people feel like it's too abstract of a concept to truly wrap your head around and make it real to us,

you know, for us to really understand it. And it has this reputation of being kind of boring or tedious, and some people even call it the dismal science for this reason. Yeah, which is true. A lot of people call it that because economics can lead to some pretty upsetting outcomes, like the idea that robot labor will one day supplant the need for human workers. But I actually read about how that nickname originated, and the funny thing is it really points to the merits of economics rather

than his drawbacks. Oh really, I haven't. I haven't read this. What did you read? Yes? So, according to this article in The Atlantic, Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer and philosopher, called economics the dismal science when he was writing in defense of the slave trade in the West Indies, and he was actual arguing that white plantation owners should be able to force black plantation workers to be their slaves. But to Carlins chagrin, he wasn't able to justify this

by looking at the economics. Apparently, like supply and demand are more in favor of leaving people alone rather than forcing them in to do labor. Wow, I don't think i'd heard that. So, so Carlisle called economics a dismal science because it wouldn't back up slavery. Is that what you're saying, Yeah, And then he railed against political economy, calling it a jury, desolate and indeed quite adject and distressing science, what we might call the dismal science. Yeah.

So if you really trace the term back to its root, it's a nickname that connects economics with morality, and it's also this argument against racism and slavery. Like Carlo considered that to be a failing of economic thought. But obviously for any decent person that's a really good thing. That's pretty cool that that's where that came from. So the dismal science is actually a tool for making the world

less dismal. Exactly. So, well, why don't we go ahead and talk about one of the big inventions and and one that also made life less dismal, especially during the hot summers. We're talking about air conditioning, yeah, I mean, you know, you know, we all know air conditioning was a big deal, but sometimes you do have to stop and really consider the impact of an invention like this. Yeah, so I'd say air conditioning is one of those inventions whose impact is always staring you right in the face,

yet you never really quite make the connection. And and I remember hearing how much like how much less legislation was passed by the founding fathers and and future congresses because of the summer heat. But uh, you know, just think about skyscrapers, like they're these beautiful bastions of finance and commerce. But without air conditioning, we'd never be able to occupy those buildings, and people on the higher floors

they'd be baked live. You know, it's weird. I had never really thought about that, But that's a good point. And air conditioning is definitely good for all kinds of business. I mean, actually, one when you were saying skyscrapers, I was thinking about shopping malls. I mean, there's no way those would exist. No one would want to walk around in them because it would just be too hot in there, but they were a huge part of the American economy

for deck aids. Yeah, and even if you look at online shopping, like remember computers stopped working all together if they get too hot. So really, without air conditioning, we wouldn't have the vast server farms that make online shopping and really the Internet itself possible. Yeah, that's very true. And it's hard to imagine cities in the Nations Sun Belt, you know, ever, of really emerging without air conditioning. We just think about how hot it's been here this summer

in Atlanta. I can't imagine there's anyway you would have made the move to Atlanta if we didn't have air conditioning, not when I looked at it, like all the states in the Sun Belt, so there's Georgia, but also like Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Southern California. It's amazing to think they all experienced population booms during the second half of the twentieth century, you know, when air conditioning became commonplace and people's homes and offices, so they it's a boom. But

like how big of a boom are we talking? Well? Pretty big. I mean between nineteen fifty and two thousand, the sun belts share of the national population shot up from twenty percent to Oh wow, that's pretty huge, all right, So the economic effect of air conditioning are definitely coming into focus now. But I want to back up a little bit. I mean, what's the story behind air conditioning, you know, the origins of it. I know Tim included it on his list, but there's got to be some good,

you know, background stories there. Absolutely, so finding a way to cool down in hot weather has been on humanity's mind forever and and in fact, there was this eccentric Roman emperor named Ella Gabalus who sent a thousand slaves into the mountains to fetch huge amounts of snow, which he then had them pile up in his garden. And and that way it was just when the wind kicked up, the cooler air would blow inside his palace. So it took a thousand people to try to cool this one dude,

Ella Gables. And I'm not sure that I remember that name. I would have to imagine that would not be easy to implement, though on like a wider scale, though definitely not. The concept was revived in the nineteenth century by an entrepreneur from Boston named Frederick Tudor. In winter, Tutor harvested blocks of ice from frozen New England lakes. Then he packed the blocks and sawdust which served his installation, and

he shipped the warmer regions in the summer. And the practice grew so popular that a mild New England winter like it would cause this panic all over and people would worry about a potential ice famine next summer. But my favorite revival of this Roman emperor's methods happened in one after a President Garfield took a bullet from a would be assassin. He had naval engineers construct this makeshift cooling device to keep him comfortable while he slowly died.

That summer, so sad, but following the Romans lead, the device cooled the room down by blowing air over a cold material. So you know, Garfield was super smart and and these naval officers are bright, and they got cotton sheets that have been soaked in ice water, and that's how they created the coldness. That's the best the Navy could come up with. I have to be honest, that doesn't seem that impressive. Well it's kind of impressive, but

just like with the Emperor's snow Mountain. It was incredibly wasteful and impractical, and Garfield's caretakers supposedly went through half a million pounds of ice in just two one. Oh wow, that is insane. All right, well, why don't you tell us how proper air conditioning then became a reality. I appreciated all that background information, but let's talk about more modern form. This is not how it happens right now.

I said, no, people aren't carrying snowback. Actually, before I do that, I didn't want to go on a little tangent about how smart Garfield was. He was this president that could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other. Um, but he was also too smart for his own good. Like you know, when he caught that bullet, he had doctors used a metal detector to locate it, which is really a smart idea, but they forgot to

count for the bed springs. So the doctors went all these exploratory missions, like trying to find things they thought were the bullet, but I thought just bullets. Tangent, that's a good one. But back to air conditioning. So the air conditioning we know today got its start in nineteen two, following the much needed advent of electricity, and and uh, surprisingly, the invention of a C had nothing to do with making people more comfortable. It was actually invented by Willis Carrier.

He's this young engineer at a heating company called Buffalo Forge, and it was this big printing company had actually tasked Buffalo Forge with creating a system to help control the heat and humidity and their factories. So they needed something to help prevent paper from wrinkling and from their ink from running down the paper like during the printing process.

And so Carrier was put in charge of the project and he's quickly figured out that circulating air over coils that were chilled by compressed ammonia, that that could help keep the humidity at a constant and as you might guess, this thrilled the printers to no end. Wow, that's interesting that it really wasn't about people at first. So how did this transition happen, you know, going from printing factories

to people's homes. Well, it was kind of slow because Carrier's original model was pretty massive, and at first the company just stuck to the other industrial clients, like you know, other places have been plagued by humidity. Uh, you can think about like flour mills, or even like the Gillette Corporation was a client. The moisture from humidity was just as bad for razor blades as it was for paper.

But um Still, Carrier knew his invention had wider applications, so four years later, in nineteen o six, he started looking into possibilities for adding a C to public buildings, but instead of government buildings or offices, he decided to target theaters, which traditionally shut down during the summer months. Yeah,

I mean, I can imagine. You can imagine all these packed bodies and one room the windows no a C. And it's definitely not a great recipe for getting people in there, not at all, and especially considering the best option for cooling a theater at the time was the way Tutor used to do it, Like some theaters had used large fans to blow air over ice and help

cool the audience. I mean the downside was, you forget about this, that pollution was on the rise, and especially in New England's lakes, so so the damp air from the melting ice it's sometimes made the whole place reek and so um so so Carrier's new device, which which he called the weather Maker, was this obvious upgrade, you know.

I mean, I've heard this before about people's first exposured air conditioning being in the nineteen twenties, you know, back when movie theaters started popping up ball over the country. But it actually never occurred to me to think about the economic upheam that would have occurred here. I mean, you know, look at where we are now with summer blockbusters raking in billions every year, and you figure a lot of this has to do with people wanting to

get a break from the heat. Absolutely, And and when home model Lacey's started being produced on mass like in in the post war nineteen fifties, they completely changed the way we live and the boom was insane. So I just looked at these figures and I saw that there were seventy four thousand units sold in ninety versts a million units sold in nineteen fifty three. So that's like

a crazy economic boom. But you know, the thing I always think when I think of economic booms, like, I've got to mention this is the mini golf craze in the they put like one course on a rooftop and in four years there were a hundred fifty courses on rooftops, like but actually there's a course on the roof of our building here, I know, one of the few remaining. I guess. Yeah. So it's impressive, but but the A C is way more actical. Wow, it's it's interesting to

think about it. And I know we want to talk about a lot more inventions, but first I feel like we need to get Tim Harford himself on the line to give us a rundown of some of his favorite inventions. So our guest today as an award winning journalist, economist, and broadcaster triple threat. As we mentioned earlier in the episode, he's the author of the best selling The Undercover Economists,

as well as Messy. But today we're going to be talking to him about this terrific book that we've been speaking about all episode long, and that's fifty inventions that shape the modern economy. Tim Harford, welcome to Part Time Genius. It's great to be on the show. Thank you. Now. I know that, um, when we asked you to come on the show, you said that you would only appear if both Manguesh and I were on the line, and

I've got bad news. This uh, this hurricane now tropical storm has thrown us for a bit of a loop. So I appreciate your willingness still to come on despite what we'd agreed to earlier. It's I felt it was the least I could do. Although you see, my familiarity with American geography is is not as hot as it might be. So for all I know you, you guys are actually speaking in Alaska and there aren't any hurricanes there. But in all seriousness, I hope that that you and

all your colleagues are safe. Thank you very much. Everyone has done fine. Our our studios are in Atlanta, and for our listeners, let you in on a little bit of a secret. We don't always record our interviews on the same days as the rest of our episode, and so our offices have been closed for a couple of days. But everyone seems to be okay, and so our thoughts are obviously with all of those affected by Hurricane Irma over the past few days in Florida and everywhere else.

But let's get started to talk about this book that we've really fallen in love with, Fifty inventions that shape the modern economy, One of the things I love about it is that even though it's really structured as this really kind of a massive list and we love list, there's still such a terrific narrative quality throughout the book, and you feel like you can follow the these stories.

And I was just wondering, you know how much time it took to try to pull this off, because you could just say, here are fifty inventions and facts about them, but you really took such great efforts to weave then such terrific narrative through all of this. I was just curious to hear about the process of writing this book.

You're very kind, thank you. I mean, one of the great things about um the way that I wrote the book was there's also a BBC series based on the book, and it's it's nine minute episodes, and each episode has got to stand alone because somebody might just tune in, they might just listen to that one story and there's no context for anything, and so you've you've got to make the story work. And nine minutes he is about words.

It's long enough to say some interesting stuff, but it's it's never long enough to say everything you might want to say, And so you've got to pick a good hook and drive towards a particular point, and there's loads and loads that that you always leave out. And I found actually incredibly fun to write like that. I had never really quite written a book in that style before, but it worked, It worked nicely. So yeah, the story

is always the thing. Well, it was terrific. And part of the fun is is seeing chapters that you don't always realize just how entertaining or interesting they're going to be. Just just as an example, you know, a chapter on concrete where you're talking about the influence that it had.

And I have to mean, when I first saw you'd listed concrete as one of these inventions that had shaped the modern economy, I really thought it was going to be about I don't know, maybe communist structures and Edison. But you know, you talk about how concrete is influencing education, so I was hoping maybe you could tell us a little bit about that, and and also why you find

concrete so interesting. Yeah, I mean I should say, Chushia of form of Soviet Premier did once give a two hour lecture on the subject of concrete and what good Soviet concrete should be like, So it's there is there is some Soviet brutalism in there, but yeah. So I began with a great story that I heard from the development economist Charles Kenny about using a concrete ready mixed concrete as an anti poverty program in rural Mexico about

fifteen years ago. So development organizations and governments are always trying to figure out where if we throw some money at the problem of poverty, is there something we can do. Maybe we should give people cash, maybe we should give people vaccinations, maybe we should provide schools. This particular poverty program anti poverty program said, we are going to provide ready mixed concrete. We're going to drive through these low income townships right up to people's doors. Obviously, it's it's

pre arranged whore you're going to go to. And then they opened the door and you just pour the ready mixed concrete from the mixer lorry the mixer truck straight

into the front room. And the people who live there have been given instructions as to how to smooth it out and look after it themselves, and they just wait and give it a few hours and it cures and then you have a concrete floor and the truck drives off to the next household, and it turns out to be fantastically effective as an anti poverty intervention because these floors are they're much more clean, they're much more hygieneq.

In particular, there's a problem with parasitic worms that the kids will pick up through their their bare feet, and they make them sick they missed school. Put the concrete floor in and this problem largely goes away, and so the whole health of the household, the mental health of the parents, the physical health of the children all improves. And it's incredibly cheap. And so I was just trying to get people to look at this really unromantic substance in a different way. If we use it wisely, it

can do a tremendous amount of good. Another invention that you talk about, and something that we actually covered a bit in an episode we did a few weeks ago on ike and their Secrets of IKEA. I'm curious to hear from, you know, including the Billy bookcase and a list of the inventions you know what makes it so special and worthy of being on a list like this. I'm totally going to download that episode. By the way,

that sounds great. The reason I put the Billy Bookcase in was because I wanted people to think about what innovation looks like in a modern economy. We get very fixated on certain particularly sexy, eye catching innovations, so things like the latest iPhone, m Google algorithms, big data, and actually a lot of the innovation that that makes the modern economy what it is is very simple. It's unromantic. It's all about process. It's all about shaving off a

bit of cost here, a bit of cost. They're getting the supply chains working a bit more smoothly, maybe trying to get the logistics reduced transport costs. It's it's not sexy, it's not exciting, but it is the reason why the you know, the dollar in your wallet goes so much further. You know, for an hour's work, you can buy much more than you could thirty, forty, fifty hundred years ago. And a lot of that is just this very a straightforward, unromantic,

unheralded logistical innovation. And the Billy bookcase stands as the representative of all of that kind of stuff. That and of course the shipping container, which gets gets his own chapter. I was curious to hear a few. If you had a favorite overlooked older invention, you know, maybe something older than you know, fifty sixty years that that maybe you didn't realize would be quite so interesting when you dived in. Yeah, there is one, the one that I have a really

soft spot for. I mean, while I was writing the book, I went all the way back to the plow, which is maybe five six, seven thousand years old and bang up to date inventions like the sell of feedback mechanism used by Uber. But the invention that I have a really soft spot four is well, let me keep you hanging for a second. Everybody said, as I was working on the book, you've got to do the Guttenberg Press.

It transformed Europe, put Europe at the center of world civilization, gave us the textbook, the newspaper, the novel, mass literacy, the Reformation is completely transformative. But when you look at the products of the Guttenberg Press, these beautiful Guttenberg Bibles, you have to ask what they're printed on. And most of them, not all of them, but most of them are printed on paper. And the printing press doesn't make

economic sense without paper. I mean, as a practical matter, you can print on animal skin parchment, but you have to kill two and fifty thousand sheep. Literally, I counted your law fall up. You have to kill two fifty sheep in order to get enough parchment to do an economically viable print run, say sort of four or five

thousand copies or something. So you need to mass produce paper before it makes any sense whatsoever to mass produce writing with The Chinese invented paper two thousand years ago. It moved to the Middle East, the Islantic world, and at six or seven hundred years a d they have mass literacy in that society, and the Europeans just were not interested. The idea that you have a cheap material to write your bibles on is like saying we're going to have a cheap metal to make crowns out of.

It felt like you were violating this this sacred thing so nobody can. And it was only when Europeans started getting more and more sophisticated commercial culture, to contracts, accounts, receipts, that sort of thing, that you start getting this demand for a cheap writing surface, and that's when paper finally starts to take off, maybe the thirteenth century, and then Shortly after that you get the Goods and book press. Wow,

that's incredible. You've taught us so many things. But we can't let you leave without putting you to the test. And even though mangas the author many of our quizzes, is unable to be here, he did send me a quiz to excellent excellent to test you with today. And it's called real invention from the U. S. Patent Office

or something we made up. Okay, so what I'll do is I'll give you a ridiculous invention and you have to tell me whether it's something uh that's actually in the U. S. Patent Office or something we just made up. Simple as that, you're ready to go, alright? Question one. Jet propulsion golf clubs. This gas powered high pressure water pump and tank forces water through a hose and into

your hollow club. When you're ready to swing, just press the red button and hang on, and highly pressurized water shoots out the back of your club and propels your swing forward. Is this something that was actually at the U. S. Patent Office or something we made up? I know there's some truly ridiculous patents, but I'm going to guess that you made that one up. We actually did not make that one up. That is true, and that that one

did in fact happen. So all right, I got a chance to make up for a number two, the aquarium vest. If you love your fish bowl but hate leaving it at home on walks, the aquarium vest is for you. Just fill it up with water, PLoP in your fish, and get out and go. Okay, that's got to be made up. It is. Yeah, good gauge on that one. Okay. Question number three the bananas suitcase. No one likes a bruised banana. That's why the banana suitcase offers a protective

plastic case for carrying a single banana around. Something tells me I have actually seen that invention. I'm pretty sure I've seen that invention and so on, And if the invention exists, the pattern probably also exists. So I'm gonna say that that is real. You are absolutely right. It was patented in two thousand three. Okay, here we go to the last question is the pogo stick weed whacker. I have to ask, are you familiar with the pogo stick?

Is that something that exam familiar with the pogo stick? My daughter, in fact, has a pogo stick, but she doesn't have a weed whackers and I was gonna say, yeah, you could, you could put her to even more use. Let's at the description here is if you want to put the fund back into thankless gardening chores, the poco stick weed whacker is for you. With every bounce, a monofilament line spins out, helping to edge grass and trim weeds.

Is this something with a real patent or something we just made up a mono for them, So it's it until you're just going to I was gonna say, yeah, it's real, but now I can't possibly imagine how it could work, so I'm gonna guess it's made up. And you are absolutely right. It is something that we just made up. And I believe that makes you three out of four, which wins you our top prize, which is a note to your mom or boss singing your praises.

So Tim, congratulations for the win. Here. Oh that's that's it's real, it's real less and that's a that's a good time. That's right. Well, I hope all of our listeners will check out Fifty Inventions that Shape the Modern Economy. It really is a terrific book. And Tim Harford, thanks so much for joining us on Part Time Genius. My pleasure. Thanks. You're listening to Part Time Genius, and we're talking about a few of the surprising inventions that have shaped the

modern world economy. So mego before the break. You mentioned how air conditioning paved the way for an economy where movies and television are big business, and so now I want to talk about an invention that forever changed the music industry, and that is the grammophone. I just feel like this is a tough sell, Like air conditioners aren't going anywhere, but the gramophone gonna be big. I mean, it seems like it had an effect on an economy at a time, but like that feels like a long

time ago. All right, Well, we'll get to the lingering impact of the grammophone, but I do want to give you a sense of why it was such a game changer in the first place. And to do that, we've got to get acquainted with one miss Elizabeth billing traits. Do you are you familiar with No, not at all? All. Right, Well, over two hundred years ago, well before recorded sound was a thing, she was actually the highest paid solo singer

in the world. Some even said she was the most talented English soprano of all time, and yet nobody knows who she is now. In fact, when the composer Joseph Hyden saw a painting that showed Billington's being serenaded by a choir of angels, he actually got irritated with us and he said the angels should be listening to her. God, And I don't think of Hyden is such a super fan. It's yeah, well he was definitely had some steep competition even for for that as well. I mean outside the

concert halls. Billington's was every bit as famous. There was even this scandalous biography written about her. So it sounds like a lot of the you know, the modern day celebrities that we would think of. And so, just like with today's pop stars, the public went wild for her offstage annex, you know, prompting a very pricey bidding war for her performances. This was between London's top opera houses, so I'm sure Elizabeth appreciated the pay day. But so

you've got to help me out. What does a singer who pre dates recorded sound have to do with the grand fun alright? Well, you know, so Tim uses her story to help underscore the different levels of success as singer could attain before and after an artist was able to produce recordings of their songs. So, in Billington's case, you know, the most she ever made in a year was the equivalent of about a million dollars today. I mean, can you even imagine trying to live on only a

million dollars and just bless her heart? As Mama would say, you know, well, it definitely doesn't sound like a small sum. I'm sure it's nowhere near what today's musicians. No, it's true. I was looking at the list from Forbes, and the highest paid solo singer in two thousand fifteen was this guy named Elton John. I don't know if you're familiar with this John, gentlemen, but he reportedly netted a hundred

million dollars that year. It actually, it's crazy to imagine that in two thousand, still making a hundred million dollars a year all in two thousand and sixteen, This one won't be a surprise. Can you guess who this probably was? Taylor Swift? She told them a hundred and seventy million dollars, making her actually not just the highest paid musician, but

the highest paid celebrity of any kind. Well, you're saying there was a huge disparity between Billington's take and Taylor Swift's is because of the gramophone, Well, I mean sort of. So nearly sixty years after Billington died, there was this economist named Alfred Marshall, and he was taking stock of how the electric telegraph had drastically affected the world's top industrialists.

And so basically, you know, he was saying that the rapid communication of telegraphs gave successful businessman an even bigger field to operate in. So you know, now they weren't just limited to where they were from, but they could make money in Europe or Australia or wherever. And and so Marshall recognized that the new technology wouldn't benefit the cream of the crop in other professional fields, so you know,

say the performing arts. And so Marshall wrote, the number of persons who can be reached by a human voice is strictly limited. So Billington's earning power was capped by the fact that you could only give so many performances and and only so many people could fit into a concert Hall at one time, which makes sense. But but Marshall is right, like the telegraph isn't going to help with that. Sure, So enter the grammophone or or actually enter the phonograph. And this was the first machine that

could both record and reproduce the human voice. Right. So that's one of Edison's inventions, the one that used like wax cylinders or whatever instead does right. Right. So Edison patent to this in eighteen seventy seven, And this was just a couple of years after Marshall's musings on the Limitation of the human voice. And it wasn't long after that that people realized the real economic potential of this invention, you know, namely the ability to record the best singers

and sell their recordings. So here's what I understand, Like, why are we talking about the gramophone when we should be talking about the phonograph? Well, because patients here, I'm gonna get to it. Because revolutionary as it was, the

phonograph had some considerable weakness. So not only was the sound quality of its cylinder's poor, they also couldn't be mass produced and a performance could only be captured on a maximum of three or four phonographs at once, and so that means that even if a singer wanted to exhaust their voice by singing the same song fifty times in a day, they'd still only have two recordings to show for this trouble. Actually, you want to know something weird. I actually have one of these in my house. This

is one of my favorite things I've ever owned. My grandfather he was an antique dealer, and he had gotten one of these, was called an Edison amber all and it's got these wax cylinders and I kind of get it. Maybe why it didn't catch on? Do you want to hear one of these? Okay, so check this one out. This one's called um, I Don't Want to Get Well, and it's about a man that goes off to war, gets injured, he's being cared for, and then of course he falls in love with a nurse and doesn't want

to get well. I don't. Yeah, I think it's uh, it's duper a remix. But the photograph expanded the number of years that could be reached by human voice, but

not nearly as much as the gramophone. Yeah, I mean it was only with Emile Berliner's invention of the gramophone in seven that true mass production became possible, you know, the reason being that Berliners recording machine used these flat zinc discs to hold the recordings, and so you know, these were suddenly portable and stackable and easier and cheaper, and you could produce these in large numbers and much more so than the phonographs cylinders. And they sounded better too,

oh man. So think of how much more dope Billington could have made if if the gramophone had been invented like eighty years earlier. Yeah, it's really true, I mean so much more. She would have been one of the big winners of this breakthrough, you know, much like the top industrialist that Alfred Marshal lauded before. And and you know, still this is something that Tim also points out in the book several times that every impact invention it creates

both economic winners and economic losers. And it's something that you don't often stop to think about. So in this case, you know, thinking about recorded sound, the losers were actually what we're called as these these journeymen singers or these lesser known B level acts who actually did pretty well for themselves when choices were limited. And let's say one

of Billington's concerts was already sold out. But as Tim puts it, when you can listen to the best performers in the world at home, why pay to here a

merely competent act in person, you know. So Thomas Edison's phonograph led the way towards this winner take all dynamic in the industry, and so the top performers went from learning like Billington too much more like Elton John And then these slightly less good performers went from a pretty comfortable living actually to really struggling to pay their bills. And so these these gaps in quality became these huge

gaps and income. That's fascinating to think about. So the B level performers still had the same skill set, but suddenly it's worth a whole lot less. And I wonder if that's change much now with digital formats like m P three's, because like for a lot of people, they either buy new music like that or they simply stream it online for free. And it seems like there might be fewer ways to make money off music recordings now without the struggle for sales, Maybe a bigger variety of

musicians get a chance to shine well. I mean, it's a nice thought. But Tim also covers this and and talks about the fact that, you know, the inequality between big and small musical acts is actually still pretty much in full effect. And in fact, I thought this statistic was really interesting. The top one percent of artists make more than five times more money than the bottom nine

put together, so it's pretty staggering. And the catches that all these profits aren't coming from mass produced recordings anymore. They're coming from live concerts, which is crazy because it's like we've gone full circle now, right, like from Billington's days to live performances being back on top. Yeah, you know, except those lucrative concert tours are driven by demand that sparked from these recordings, so it's still a huge part

of it. And and that whole economic system, for better or worse, it owes a huge debt of gratitude to the Gramophone. See and I guess we owed a that too since since we're podcast hosts, So so thank you, Granmophone. That's right, life with you, okay. So, so we've looked at two big ease and and one thing they have in common besides being economic shapers, is that they're both physical products, but they're also a fair amount of inventions

that are totally conceptual or abstract. So what do you see we give those ideas to do all right, Well, the conceptual inventions were definitely some of my favorites from this book. You know, for example, the cold chain, And have you ever heard of the cold chain? I had not really thought known it as this term, but it

actually is pretty interesting to think about. This is this is the term for the global you know, temperature controlled supply system that keeps all these perishable goods and low temperatures while they're being shipped and stored around the world.

So so think about the fact that, you know, we wouldn't be able to transport blood or drugs or vaccines without them going bad and transit if we didn't have some way to keep them consistently cold, or you know, safely ship fish or meat for more than a day or two away from where their packaged. Or even think about things like fruits, you know, bananas, pineapples, all these things that get to our local grocery stores. None of

these things would be possible. And it's as far as getting them to us without the cold chain, I know, it's so weird that we get bananas like completely yellow, right, But but the cold chain is pretty special and and I like how it isn't the invention of anyone person, like instead, it's this amazing result of like a bunch of different people in different countries, on different continents, and they're all meeting this like need in society and stepping

up to meet it like whatever they can. I mean, just think about it, like how it braced down, Like an engineer in France builds a ship with an onboard refrigerator system and uh, and then a mechanic and Cincinnati starts outfitting trucks with the system of his own, and little by little it's all linked together. It's kind of amazing. Yeah, it really is. I mean, it's one of the most

influential inventions of the last century. And so you know, the full chain came together really, I guess it was in the late nineteen thirties around that time, and it's odd to think of how even things like World War two might have been completely different without it. Definitely, But you know, there was one abstract invention I wanted to mention that's even newer than the cold chain. And Tim's book covers things like insurance and intellectual property. But one

of my favorite entries was on seller feedback. Yeah, yeah, I actually I thought that was an incredible section of that. So this stuff that helps you determine whether that eBay listing is too good to be true, or whether you're Uber driver can be trusted, or things like this exactly. And we don't really think of those star based ranking systems and hundred character reviews as these like influencers of the economy, but but maybe we should. So, so why

would you say that? Well, Tim describes seller feedback as this necessary component of online platforms that offer what's called quote, collaborative consumption. You know, I've heard that term thrown around recently. I feel like it's one of these, and there's a bunch of these. I mean, it's like crowd based capitalism and the sharing a economy. That's another big one I

feel like I hear over and over. I guess. I mean, it feels like they're all just different ways of describing stuff like Airbnb or Uber, right, I mean, that's that's kind of what that is. Yeah, Like the services like ride sharing, dog walking or doing some odd job around the house, like anything that involves matching people who have these coincidental wants. So, for example, like, so you need to spend the next hour working on a business proposal instead of walking your dog, and I want to make

some money during a spare hour. Like in a traditional marketplace, like both of those wants would probably go unmet for one reason or another. But with the Internet, of course, and this is obvious, the instant access to a digital marketplace that provides suddenly we can find each other and you can finish your proposal and I can walk your dog right right right, Yeah, I mean it actually kind of feels like a whole new kind of commerce. Though, really,

if you think about it. Yeah, so, I think Tim really sums it up nicely when he says this, and this is a quote. Uh. This function of matching people who have coincidental wants is among the most powerful ways the Internet is reshaping the economy. Platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, eBay, and task rabbit create real value. They tap into capacity that would have gone to waste. A spare room, a spare hour, a spare car seat. You know, think about

this though, it it makes sense. What you're saying makes sense, but it kind of feels like the Internet is the real economy shape or here. So how does this relate to seller feedback? Yeah? So I actually wondered that too. But it's all about trust, right Like. Without trust, you can't have a legitimate marketplace, and and no one would be able to choose to do business with each other

if we were all potential enemies. But that trust, like the kind that traditional markets provide in the form of well known brands or immovable store fronts or just personal relationships, that's so much harder to come by online, or at least it was before eBay, right like, and and eBay

really changed this. They introduced seller feedback to the world, and once people had a system that gave them the reason to trust each other on the Internet, they overcame their natural caution and this new type of industry was off to the races. I guess we're celebrating the twentieth anniversary of seller feedback. I don't know why this isn't being talked about more. Actually, I saw this fact the other day. Do you know what the first item ever

sold on eBay was. I'm not like like a pezz dispenser. I knew that, good guest, but it was actually a broken laser pointer. Was that your next guest. It was this guy Mark Frasier that he was. He decided to take this fifteen dollar gamble or something like that because he was looking for one of these laser pointers for work. He was giving presentations all the time, and he decided to try to find one that was broken and fix it himself so he could get a deal. And he did.

That's so crazy, Like, I don't think about laser pointers enough. He really don't. I meant to tell you that I meant to have an intervention until you need to talk about It's all about coincidental wants again, right right, and it's it's a beautiful thing. But now it's time for

something truly stunning. Are you ready for this? Mango for the part times fact off always all right, since we've talked about some of the most influential inventions in modern times, we agreed for the fact off, and I hope you're still planning to do this, that we share some of our favorite ridiculous inventions that you know, maybe they won't revolutionize any industry, but we still kind of like to own them for one reason or another. So I'm gonna start and I want to talk about the mobile toilet

paper dispenser. Have you seen this? It's this old Japanese invention of like headgear with the toilet paper roll over your head and you just pull it down, like wait, when you need to blow your nose. I want to strap into my kids so badly. Wow, So you go ahead, you if you've got this helmet on, I guess you can go anywhere with that. Okay, what agrees anywhere? I guess. I guess I can get behind that. All right, Well, I'm gonna go with the dog Brella. I mean, honestly,

I may order one of these. So when I take our dog out and it's raining, I try to hold the umbrella over both of us, but usually that just results in me getting wet, and there's no way to do this effectively. And of course these like doggy ponchos and things like that are kind of silly. So the dog Brella has this rod that serves as a leash, but with an umbrella on the end of it so you can keep your pup dry. It's pretty smart. Yeah, I mean, it's no sneezing on the go, No, that's right.

So so the next thing I want is like one of these hand choppers, and and uh, you know, I love chopping veggies, but I'm terrified of sharp knives. So this is basically a zombie hand where you hold the rubber fingers where your fingers should go on the edge of a carrot or whatever, and then you chop away. It's like outsourcing a hand, except you've got to use your hand to make that work. That's still that's still

pretty interesting. Okay, all right, Well the next one I was going to come up with was the chork, and it's chopsticks at one end and a fork on the other, which is just brilliant or maybe it's stupid. I don't know, but I just like saying chork. So I'm going to get one of these. So, speaking of stupid, I want one of these hand buggers. It's a mold with the

press to make hamburger meat into hot dog shapes. And it's called a ham dog Yeah, but you don't even eat hot dogs, I know, or hamburgers, but it's called a ham dogger. All right. Well, if you're willing to buy a ham dogger, I'm gonna have to give you this week's fact Off trophy. And I can't wait for our next cookout. Thank you and thank you all for listening.

See you next time. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown

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