Barbed wire, concrete, razor blades, passports, Bakelite and the sewage system are all crucial to the way we live now yet what do most of us know about who, when, how they were invented? In an ambitious new series for the World Service, 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy, Tim Har-
ford intends to put us straight, taking one thing each week over the next year and in just nine, tight, well-ordered minutes giving us its potted history.