"Lighter than air, stronger than whiskey, cheaper than dust." - Poetic 1875 sales pitch for barbed wire, by inventor John Warne Gates
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"The pleasure car is the travelling representative of a man's taste or refinement. A dilapidated pleasure car, like a decrepit horse, advertises that the driver is lacking in funds, or pride." - Charles C Parlin, OG market researcher
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Air-conditioning was invented initially not for human comfort, but to control humidity for a printing company, then other industrial clients (textiles, razors). Then the theater, where nobody went on hot summer days. Carrier called it the Weathermaker
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It took 50yrs for factories to transition from steam power to electric power, even though it was cleaner, safer, more efficient. Why? Existing systems were optimized for the former - you can't just swap A for B, you also need to change the architecture, production line, workers
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Grocery manufacturer representatives argued with their food chain counterparts for about 5 years - non-stop meetings - to come to an agreement on a Universal Product Code. Grocers wanted 11 digits, Chains wanted 7 digits. The CEOs got involved. Bar codes today have 12 digits
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The United Fruit Company was cosy with Guatemalan dictator Ubico. He let them own the best farmland, cheap. The Guatemalans overthrew Ubico. UFC didn't like this; got a PR agency to smear the popular leader as a dangerous communist. CIA got involved, ousted him. Banana republic.
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Elevators move almost 1B people a day. China installs 700,000 new ones a year. They allow dense urban settings with a modest environmental footprint; subways wouldn't make as much sense without them. We expect to wait less than a minute for them. They're 10x safer than escalators
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1977: Stanford researchers were abt to present their work on public-key cryptography when the NSA warned them it would be legally equivalent to exporting nuclear arms to hostile foreigners. The genie was let out of the bottle, & it's what keeps your credit card details safe. Ish.
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Railway Mania in 1830s Britain - many speculators plowed their savings into proposed new routes, some which were never built at all. The railway company faked their accounts. The actual railways were ultimately a success; the financing was a disaster. Bubble collapsed in 1850.
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The word "incorporate" means "take on bodily form". Corporations are legal concepts. Prior to LLCs, investors were personally liable for everything the biz did. Elizabeth I kicked them off with EIC, then New York followed. (On retrospect, they were pretty much summoning demons)
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It wasn't retrospect. They knew what they were doing.
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