🎧 Contactless Payment
🎧 Patented: History of Inventions • 31m
*tap* *tap* *tap*
That’s the sound of physical cash being consigned to the dustbin of history by us tapping cards/phones/watches instead.
Contactless payments are growing so rapidly that it seems a safe prediction that a cashless future is not far away.
In the UK contactless payments rose 52% between 2019 and 2021. Some shops already don’t take cash. And it’s a similar picture in countries across the world.
We’ve been using hard cash as the primary way to pay for things for millenia. How has this new technology crept up on us so fast?
Up Next in 🎧 Patented: History of Inventions
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🎧 Air Conditioning
No summer blockbuster. No Las Vegas and no skyscrapers in Dubai. No chocolate bars when the weather gets hot. Air conditioning is one of those things we take for granted but that has transformed the world around us, for good and for bad.
There are 1.6 billion air conditioners in the world toda...
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🎧 Baby Formula
The United States has been suffering from a baby formula shortage for months now. It’s shown how reliant we are on this one commodity. People need it to feed their babies. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.
But we managed without baby formula for a very, very long time. So when did the United...
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🎧 Measurements
A pint might be Britain’s most beloved measurement. But what’s the name for the distance a reindeer can walk before it needs to pee?
The way we measure things changes the way we see the world. Measurements have shaped our history and are bound up in ideas of statehood, power and control.
“Measu...
