Join us on Our American Stories as economist and bestselling author Tim Harford shares fascinating insights from his book, Fifty Things That Shaped the Modern Economy. Discover how simple innovations hold the power to transform societies, beginning with the humble plow. We’ll journey back to see how this fundamental farming tool didn’t just break new ground for crops; it sparked the very foundations of civilization, creating food surpluses, supporting new communities, and forever changing human history. It’s a remarkable look at how basic technology can set the stage for profound social shifts, proving that even the earliest inventions shaped our world in powerful ways.
From ancient fields to the American frontier, Tim reveals how another crucial invention, barbed wire, drastically reshaped the American West. Hear the powerful story of how a desperate need for fencing materials after the Homestead Act led to this ingenious solution, protecting property and defining the landscape for generations of settlers. Then, we fast-forward to the digital age, exploring Google Search, a modern marvel that has completely revolutionized how we find information and connect with the world around us. This exploration reveals how human ingenuity, from farming tools to digital solutions, continually drives progress and shapes our daily lives.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
It’s a wonderful example of how technology has profound effects on society. We think about technologies as solving problems. So with the plow, what’s the problem? I want to grow crops. The soil is not very fertile. I need to break up the surface of the soil. So I invent the plow. But of course, that’s just the beginning. Then all the social changes begin. So, with the case of the plow, it created a surplus. It created a harvest that you could store somewhere at the end of the year, which meant you had an incentive to form up in big gangs. These days, we call them armies, and we go and take the grain in someone else’s barn. It meant that you could support an elite: people who thought, who planned, bureaucrats, accountants, priests. It meant you could support cities, and with cities, of course, comes the whole of civilization. So, you could really say this is where the whole thing started, whether you like it or not, with the plow.
You say this. There was a reason that American farmers were so hungry for barbed wire. A few years earlier, in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act.
So that act said, anybody who wants to move to the West, to the Midwest, and to put up a fence and to farm some land for five years—men, women, freed slaves, anyone who wants to do that—that land will be theirs at the end of a few years. So, it seems like a huge opportunity. The only trouble is, when these new settlers get to the Great American Prairie, they realize there is no wood, or certainly there’s not enough wood to spare putting up miles and miles of fences. And so if they want to claim land, and in particular to keep off these tough, long-horned cattle from trampling all over the place, they need a source of fencing. So, this is one of those situations: sometimes people invent things and they never know what is going to be used for. So the classic is the laser. The laser’s invented, and it’s a solution looking for a problem. Complete opposite with barbed wire. Everybody knew what the problem was. It’s, how do we make inexpensive fencing that doesn’t require a lot of wood? And there were huge efforts—lots and lots of patents for different fencing techniques emerge from the American Midwest at the time, lots of people trying to solve the problem. The American government issuing reports saying we need fencing material. And then about ten years later, J. F. Gliddon of DeKalb, Illinois, produces this patent for this technology, and it is the first recognizably modern barbed wire where you have a little twist. You have two pieces of wire together. You twist one around the other in order to keep these barbs secure as they don’t slide up and down the wire. And that’s really barbed wire as we know it even today. And it was immediately a sensational hit. So, within a few years, the factory of Glidden and his associates were producing over two hundred and fifty thousand miles of barbed wire each year. But, as with the plow, it created winners and it created losers that it completely reshaped the American landscape. And it was just one of those things where President Abraham Lincoln had granted people property rights, and yet those property rights are really no good unless there’s some practical technology for defending the property rights, and it was barbed wire.
Let’s talk about Google’s search.
I was trying to describe to my wife the other day. I was using a search engine on a newspaper website, and it wasn’t working very well, and I was saying, “Oh, Google works so well!” This search engine’s so bad. I can’t Google anything. So, even when I was trying to describe the process of searching for something not using Google, I was still using the verb to Google. So, it’s just transformed the way that we access the Internet, that we access the World Wide Web. I’m old enough to remember the world before Google and the Internet before Google, and you would discuss strategies for how to find things. So you would say, “Oh, if if you know, for example, that a particular person has been working on a problem and you want to find some information.” If you search for their name, that might help, because it is completely useless to search for an actual phrase or a bit of content. That’s never going to work. But maybe if you search for someone’s name. When Google came along, suddenly you would type stuff into the search bar, and you would actually find it. And that, that has been completely transformative, and of course, it continues to reshape the economy because now it’s become more and more local. These search engines. They’re on our phones, so your attention is being directed. You want to search for a place to have a drink nearby. You’ve been locked out of your house. You need to find a locksmith. Google is trying to solve these problems—sometimes with great success, sometimes not—and enormous amounts of effort are devoted to where you come on that Google Search ranking. If you’re on page three of the Google Search ranking, you’re absolutely nowhere. So, it’s an insight into the way that a particular technology can unlock a whole world of information out there.
And you’ve been listening to Tim Harford, author of Fifty Things That Shaped the Modern Economy. You heard him talk about the plow, barbed wire, which was fascinating. What a story he told about all those Americans rushing the settlers to populate the American prairie, and there was not enough wood to make fences to claim that land and protect the property rights of those landholders! An incomes barbed wire. Two hundred and fifty thousand miles of barbed wire made every year, and it reshaped landscape. By the way, Harford was quick to point out the word “patent.” He says, “Peyton”; we say “patent.” And of course, intellectual property rights and property rights of all kinds are defended by patent rights. And last, of course, Google, which is now a verb. Tim Harford with Fifty Things That Shaped the Modern Economy, the story of the plow, barbed wire, and Google, here on Our American Story. Lee Habib here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we hear is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
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