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I want a table/chart of the price of iron (various grades including steel) over the long run, say 1700–present. Surely this is a thing the field of economic history should have produced by now? Yet, the data seems scattered and not unified. Am I missing something?

Surely this is a thing the field of economic history should have produced by now? Yet, the data seems scattered and not unified.

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about 2 years ago

Mass transit came before cars. It was good, but not enough. There was tremendous demand for cars, and consumers rapidly switched: pic.twitter.com/x70vnYd0P1

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The phonograph was invented in the late 1800s, but for decades, recording technology was quite primitive by today's standards: pic.twitter.com/RcVLhkSbKO

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Why innovation is hard: the idea maze is intricate, and you're groping in the dark. Trying topical applications of penicillin to wounds was a totally reasonable idea, but it didn't work. Easy to get discouraged and not realize you are one tweak away from a breakthrough pic.twitter.com/zmYueMaQ8w

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The idea maze is intricate, and you're groping in the dark. Trying topical applications of penicillin to wounds was a totally reasonable idea, but it didn't work. Easy to get discouraged and not realize you are one tweak away from a breakthrough

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The transition from urban transit to automobiles was “enthusiastic”. “The twentieth-century urban ridership despised fixed rail transit.” pic.twitter.com/OUlCxig4HR

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Job security is much greater today than in the early 20th century and before. Day labor and piece work were gradually replaced with full-time permanent employment. pic.twitter.com/7I5ciw6GTI

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Day labor and piece work were gradually replaced with full-time permanent employment.

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Retirement is a 20th-century invention. The machines *did* take our jobs—they took jobs away from the elderly after retirement, from school-age children, and from everyone else after 5pm and on the weekends. And that's a good thing. pic.twitter.com/fAY76f8UM6

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The machines did take our jobs—they took jobs away from the elderly after retirement, from school-age children, and from everyone else after 5pm and on the weekends. And that's a good thing.

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We take food security for granted, but it's a major 20th-century achievement. In addition to the threats of drought and frost, crops were also subject to the ravages of disease and pests: pic.twitter.com/G0PQCSwLSy

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I find it fascinating that even within stone tools, a technology that dates back millions of years (before our own species!), there is a story of progress. Polished stone had several advantages over flaked stone: pic.twitter.com/XroRVzzlRx

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Imagine having no central heating, and having to take a hot brick from the kitchen stove to your room to warm up your bed at night: pic.twitter.com/rAMaK8XFGn

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The American “worships the results of things that are big” but “hates anything that is big and powerful” pic.twitter.com/pU8mFGX7lY

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“Thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine owes to thermodynamics.” True—but the steam engine owes a lot to the theory of air pressure and the properties of the vacuum: pic.twitter.com/IA9znp9oWi

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True—but the steam engine owes a lot to the theory of air pressure and the properties of the vacuum.

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Howard Florey—head of the lab that created penicillin, and hence one of the greatest benefactors of humanity—wasn't motivated by humanitarianism, but by science: pic.twitter.com/Ao2IFzBUH7

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Sandra Shaw makes art history into a grand and dramatic story—how views of life and the world have changed over the long term, illustrated in painting and sculpture. I'm excited about her new book, which I just bought: windowsonhumanity.com

Our daughter was born this year. To her, the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars that followed will be history—almost as far in the past for her as the Vietnam War is for me.

over 2 years ago

This idea seems obviously wrong to us now, but it was not at all obvious before the germ theory pic.twitter.com/Jn5dRxfVST

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This is a point also made by @rachellaudan: dishes we think of as “traditional cuisine” are *not* what the average person ate for most of history pic.twitter.com/nvHypKnNqr

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