#@timharford

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Florence Nightingale: Data Viz Pioneer https://t.co/szNeCWV6NC

— 99 Percent Invisible (@99piorg) March 2, 2021

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/1155647284375277568

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: RFID https://t.co/0SL8ZWyf5R pic.twitter.com/Ot9prChchP

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford) July 29, 2019

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/924119798451027969

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Credit Card https://t.co/RJ5pcHRXUD http://pic.twitter.com/Pm1ctLbt1G

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

October 28, 2017

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/919043359208960001

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Cold Chain https://t.co/UzzBjAckfM http://pic.twitter.com/b2zOqpmK1n

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

October 14, 2017

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/916507262239178752

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Welfare State https://t.co/47vX1kBBdr http://pic.twitter.com/T7t07wfJLe

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

October 7, 2017

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/906361785657131008

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Double-entry Bookkeeping https://t.co/vjiEzTa55P http://pic.twitter.com/eTFmWXMN5X

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

September 9, 2017

Luca Pacioli was a renaissance man – he was a conjuror, a master of chess, a lover of puzzles, a Franciscan Friar, and a professor of mathematics. But today he’s celebrated as the most famous accountant who ever lived, the father of double-entry bookkeeping. Before the Venetian style of bookkeeping caught on, accounts were rather basic. An early medieval merchant was little more than a travelling salesman. He had no need to keep accounts – he could simply check whether his purse was full or empty. But as the commercial enterprises of the Italian city states grew larger, more complex and more dependent on financial instruments such as loans and currency trades, the need for a more careful reckoning became painfully clear. In 1494 Pacioli wrote the definitive book on double-entry bookkeeping. It’s regarded by many as the most influential work in the history of capitalism. And as the industrial revolution unfolded, the ideas that Pacioli had set out came to be viewed as an essential part of business life; the system used across the world today is essentially the one that Pacioli described.

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/903818031314251776

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: S-Bend https://t.co/kEn36Emwyh http://pic.twitter.com/PSHYZmAO4o

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

September 2, 2017

If you live in a city with modern sanitation, it’s hard to imagine daily life being permeated with the suffocating stench of human excrement. For that, we have a number of people to thank – not least a London watchmaker called Alexander Cumming. Cumming’s world-changing invention owed nothing to precision engineering. In 1775, he patented the S-bend. It was a bit of pipe with a curve in it and it became the missing ingredient to create the flushing toilet – and, with it, public sanitation as we know it. Roll-out was slow, but it was a vision of how public sanitation could be – clean, and smell-free – if only government would fund it. More than two centuries later, two and a half billion people still remain without improved sanitation, and improved sanitation itself is a low bar. We still haven’t reliably managed to solve the problem of collective action – of getting those who exercise power or have responsibility to organise themselves.

[furryalligator]

Source: http://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/901281562481774592

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: Radar https://t.co/wNyVt0vdGw http://pic.twitter.com/tsXd3myo3q

— Tim Harford (@TimHarford)

August 26, 2017