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Top 10 Inventions in Money Technology During the 1900's
scuggums writes "The DaVinci Institute has put together an interesting historic piece to help put the world of money technology into perspective. While I'm glad to see the ATM machine made the list, I had no idea it was invented back in 1939. Other items on the list are barcodes, spreadsheets, and RSA encryption. This looks to be one of the research pieces the Institute's doing for their upcoming Future of Money Summit in October."
They mentioned VisiCalc, but not Apple, the only widely available platform it ran on?
They probably didnt mention electricity either.
yes, I'm a small-c communist.
and you sure are a big-M Moron. How can anybody in 2003 want to abolish money?
Money isn't evil, it's just a portable simulation of real trade, just like you send files over the internet instead of having to go see the other guy and give him a diskette. The fact that certain goods or services can be overrated or underrated doesn't change the fact that money was one of the single greatest invention of the human race.
You go trade sacks of grains in the sovkhoz with your fellow idealist friends, while everybody else will takes care of advancing civilization thank you very much.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They mentioned VisiCalc, but not Apple, the only widely available platform it ran on?
Notice they didn't mention the Electric Company, which is what the Electronic Cash Register ran off of.
This Top 10 list is only concerned with finance-specific innovation, not the underlying technology/framework it runs on.
The unofficial
Yeah, screw that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing. Where'd that Constitution thingy go anyhow?
-moitz-
Screw 'em...who cares what anyone thinks.
So they are being used, only not in your backward assed Texan run country
Here we use credit cards. Its more secure to have financial information stored server-side.
Smart cards can be hacked. I should know, I used refill my public telephone calling card back when I lived in Argentina.
The unofficial
Proud patriot and republican voter.
The first international banking system was establish ed by the Knights Templar during the crusades. ... I just think it's kind of interesting that banking has its roots in a militant order.
International banking goes back to Ancient Greece. The various city-states amounted, in their day, to the equivalent of today's nation-states. They carried on bank-supported trade with each other, and with more distant states such as Egypt.
Your point about banking having its roots in a militant order is well made. Indeed, governments have always reserved for themselves two things: armies and currency.
-kgj
The title says it all. The EURO too while were at it. IMHO, government has no business being in the money business other than punishing people who act fradulently, and holding dishonest people accountable. I'm not saying we should have a gold standard, but something whose value can't be manipulated by government policy. (Yeah, I know the FED technically isn't part of the US govt - but give me a break)
I'm pretty sure this was intended to be moderated Funny, and if not, I'm really scared.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Modded funny?
The only thing funny is that the USians don't know what we mean. While you guys have pulling out soggy wads of green from your washing machines here in Australia we've been successfully laundering our plastic notes since the 80's.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
There are certificates for both (or were, that is). The gold one I saw was orange. A good book is Money by James Ewart, lots of fun photos of old US money.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
Let's put it another way. Consider the dollar and the Yen. Let's say both are backed by gold. Each dollar is backed up by one ounce of gold in the US federal reserve, while each yen is backed up by two ounces provided by the BOJ. You have now fixed the relationship of the dollar to the yen at 2 dollars/yen. So yes, the gold standard does in fact fix relationships. If everyone uses gold, then they all flucauate equally, so changes in the value of gold do not impact trade relationships
But let's say the japanese economy tanks, and they their buying power is really only 1 dollar/yen. People who have yen will trade them in (at the nominal rate of 2 dollars/yen) to get 2 dollars, and have thus doubled their real buying power. The BOJ then has to start buying yen with dollars (if they have them) or gold in order to equalize the value. But what happens if they run out of both? That was the trouble under the old system.
That system fell apart, and (even though some new ones were suggested) no replacement was ever implimented. The "chaos" that ensued was basically the best system possible.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I have to say I find it odd that every single one of these inventions was made in the U.S.A.
Many other countries have significant financial institutions that are equally, or arguably more, sophisticated.
I don't have the timem or for that matter the inclination to research this myself, but I'd have thought that at least one out of any top ten money technology inventions would have had a non-U.S. origin.
The article states that the social impact of the credit card "cannot be under-estimated." That means that however little importance one attributes to it, one will not have erred in assigning too little. The more usual phrase, more likely reflective of the author's intent, is "cannot be overstated." Perhaps he had in mind "should not be underestimated."