FACTORALY - E26 MONEY

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

It makes the world go around... but how much do you actually know about its history? In this episode, we go from bartering to Bitcoin and from cocoa beans to million-pound coins. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

hello again hello it's you it's me it's you it's us and here we are together for another episode of... Factory. And you are Simon... Don't tell me. Okay. Don't tell me. Simon... Go on. Water, deep... So close. Wishing. Yeah, Wells. That's the one. Simon Wells.

And you are Bruce, batting, pitching, throwing, catching. Oh, fielding. Correct. There you go. That's how I... When people ask me how to spell my name, I usually say it as in cricket or rounders or something. Fine. Correct. There you go. That's how I, when people ask me how to spell my name, I usually say as in cricket or rounders or something. Fine. Okay. And so who are we? What are we doing here?

We are voiceovers and we use our voice for a living to do all sorts of wonderful things. But we do a podcast. Which is what you happen to be listening to. What a coincidence. And Fact Orally is, it's about facts. Which we deliver orally. Orally, yes.

So today we're going to talk about money. We are, yes. A dirty subject for some, but it is the system upon which an awful lot of everyday business is based. Yes, and it has been for quite some time. How long would you say? Well, it depends what you call money. Right. So is money something that you exchange for something else?

So, for example, if you're an Aztec and you want some tools and you have some cocoa beans and you switch the cocoa beans for the tools, are the cocoa beans money? Right. That is a good distinction to make isn't it so um bartering exchanging one type of goods for another has been going on since forever you know someone has a thing that they don't need someone else has a need that they don't have a thing for let's exchange quite simple if you're exchanging a good directly for a good, I don't think that's money. I think money comes in where you're using some form of token that represents value. Yes.

That has an agreed value. Yeah. In Siberia, for example, solid blocks of tea were used as money. Right. But they weren't to buy other tea. They were used to buy other things in Siberia. Or they had a lovely thing in Tristan da Cunha where potatoes were used as currency. Oh, really?

Up until the Second World War. Wow. Quite recently. Quite recently. Wow. Okay. Canada used playing cards as banknotes for a while. Did they?

How odd. In Solomon Islands, they used dog's teeth as a sort of form of currency. In parts of Africa and Europe, they were using seashells of various sizes and rarity for thousands of years. Some of the oldest coins actually have an impression of a seashell on them because they were that ubiquitous. Oh, wow. I didn't realise that. So do you know where we get the first thing that can be recognised as a coin, for instance? I don't. I don't.

So the first coins, or at least the oldest coins that we know to exist, came from around 770 BC from China. They were not terribly official. It's not like it was the national currency. But, you know, you can definitely see these metallic tokens with some kind of impression or engraving on them being exchanged for goods. And it was only a handful of years after that, 700 BC, that paper money was introduced again in China. So they sort of seem to have been the the forefront of using this stuff but the first official national coinage uh that that seems to have been found was from around 600 bc uh and this was in lydia which is uh you know what what is now part of turkey and um king Turkey. And King, I hope I get this right, King Aliates set up a royal mint. And so that country

was the first place to have an official nationally accepted standardized currency all the way back in If we go back to the 700s AD, we discover that there is a thing called a pound. A pound? The pound. Don't think I've heard of those. Never heard of it. So the pound is the oldest form of currency still in use in the world. Really?

And it goes back to 775 AD, the first mention of a pound. And it was the value of a pound of silver. Right. OK. So the word pound actually relates to the weight of a pound. Yes. Pound of silver. Huh.

Yeah. OK. And so if you think about weight, the short form for pound is LB. Yes. When you write it down. Yes. And you can shorten that to L if you want. And if you look at the pound sign, it's actually an L.

Ah, right. Okay. Now I have a different origin of that. Ah, you're probably going for the livre. I was. So tell me about livre. Right. The livre, as it shall now forever be pronounced. It's tricky, isn't it? When things come from different sources around the same time, it's very difficult to say which one is accurate. So I'm not suggesting that this one is right and your one is wrong, but they could coincide. King Charlemagne of France, around the same time,

sort of the late 700s, came up with this currency, again, based on a pound of silver. He divided his pound of silver into 20 sous, each of which was divided into 12 denieres. And this was called a libra. So the pound of silver was called a libra. And that it was the word libra, the Latin for money, that formed the L shape for the pound sign. Ah.

But they could both be right. The symbol itself is older than I thought. The first example of that actually being written down, the Bank of England, in its vast collection of all things money-related, they've got a cheque dated from January 1660. Wow. With a very, very obvious English pound sign written on it. So that's been in use since the mid-17th century, which is older than I would have thought. That's fantastic.

There were other things that were divisible as well. For example, the Spanish dollar was designed to be divisible. A Spanish dollar was worth eight reals. And you could actually cut it up into eight pieces. Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. No, you're kidding me. Is that where that comes from? Yes.

Wow. So a piece of eight was a whole Spanish dollar. Right. So you could cut it up into half or into quarters. A quarter. A quarter dollar. Yes. Brilliant.

Or two bits. Why is two bits a quarter? Because it's from the Spanish dollar. Great. That's wonderful. Do you know why dollars are green? Nope. American dollars.

Yeah, sure. It was during the Civil War they decided that dollars should be green. And they decided that they needed a dye for the paper that didn't discolor or fade or decompose. And they looked at lots and lots and lots of different dyes and colors. And the one that stayed as stable as possible was a green dye. Right. Fascinating. Paper money isn't really paper it's mostly fabric yes it's sort of made out of cotton and things isn't it it's about 25 cotton 25 linen and 50

pulp really there's a there's a lot of fat you can wear money and it would be fine well old money anyway because new money's all made of plastic it could probably wear that as well i read that the um the modern notes that are made out of plastic uh the plastic is so rigid if you were to cut a little sliver off a note it would be sharp enough to use in place of the needle on a record player wow so you could actually play a record with money. The Federal Reserve made a $100,000 note. Okay. It was used to exchange money between banks.

Right. So it never actually got out of the banking system. Yeah. Similarly, in the UK, there was another internal banking thing where there were a few thousand pound notes knocking around the system for a while. And then Mark Twain came up with this idea of the million pound bank note which was made into a film starring gregory peck oh okay which is i think isn't gregory peck oh it's rhyming slang for check okay so maybe we should talk about checks oh i've never done such a good segue in my life.

I'm very happy with that. Let's just take a moment and enjoy that. Gregory Peck, check. Let's talk about checks. Wonderful. Yes. So the origin of checks. Do you know what?

I never even thought about looking at checks. They seem like such a redundant thing to me now. I still have a cheque book. I never use it. Tell me about cheques. So cheques were originally like a piece of paper that was given to somebody to give to somebody else in another place. So for example, if you wanted to take money from one country to another, it's often Jewish moneylenders who did this. And you would go to your Jewish moneylender in Switzerland and say, could I have a note to give to a Jewish moneylender in London to say that I've given you this much money and that he should therefore give

me that much money when I get to the UK? Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. And that was very early on. And then people used to write their own check. So then checks became a bit more formal. You had to print some out, at least with the name of the bank on the top of the check and ideally with your account number on the check somewhere. And you could still handwrite the check. But up until quite recently, you could write that on anything. Oh, really?

For example, in 1978, someone wrote a cheque with the constituent parts all correctly filled in and drawn on a valid account. So they wrote on a large £150 halibut. Wait, wait, wait, sorry. On a halibut? A £150 halibut. Wait, wait, wait. Sorry. On a halibut. £150 halibut was a cheque. And it was written out correctly.

It was to honour a rates bill to the local council from a guy called Randall Arnold, who was reportedly protesting the condition of roads outside his frozen food depot. Oh, that is so obscure. I know. I've got, do you know what? I'll put a picture on the show notes of this enormous, being held by two people, one at either end, £150 halibut. How bizarre.

People are odd, aren't they? So, you know how it's illegal to deface money? Yes. There's this whole thing about the fact that it's illegal to damage, tear, rip, burn, draw on, etc., etc., money. Which is one of the good things about plastic money is that it makes it harder to do those things to it. Yes. But apparently, it's only illegal to partly burn money. Oh.

If you partly burn a banknote, it leads itself open to being reintroduced into circulation and used. But of course it can't be used because it's partly burned. Yeah. And that's what causes the issue. So either you don't burn your money at all, or you completely and utterly burn it down to the level of ashes, so that there's no chance whatsoever of it being put back into circulation. So the KLF weren't actually doing anything illegal? No, no. Was it supposed to be a million pounds or something that they burned? Yeah, something like that, wasn't it? All of those cartoon characters who light their cigars with a burning banknote.

Perfectly fine, just so long as you let the banknote burn down to ashes. Yeah. I read that the British pound is the most counterfeited currency. Oh, wow. The pound coin? Notes. Notes. Yeah.

Because these days, even coins have security. I mean, the old thing about clipping a coin. Yes. So coins were made of a precious metal. Yes. So, for example, a silver coin, you could just clip a little bit around the edge and then gather together all the clippings around the edge and make yourself another coin. Yeah, absolutely. But people would accept it as the coin that it was supposed to be. Yeah.

So that's why you have serrated edges on older coins. And now why modern coins, they go to even greater lengths to try and stop people from counterfeiting them. What exists on a modern coin that makes it so uncounterfeitable? Well, on a British coin, I think it's Latin. It's a whole Latin sort of verse on the sides of a British coin. If you look at the side of a British pound coin, you'll see something written on the side. And it's also serrated.

And it's also, you know, I think it doesn't a modern pound. It's not round. No, it's not. It's slightly, well, it's not hexagonal, but it's got edges to it, hasn't it? Yeah, and also the British currency now, if you put it all together, I think it makes a picture. It does, yes. Yeah, my son is fascinated with this fact that the most recent redesign of the British coins, I can't remember how long ago that was now, but each one of them contains a a section of a picture and when you put them all

together it makes up the coat of arms of great britain i think yes one one one of each denomination yeah that's it yeah and it's such a such a good idea it's really clever now i find it fascinating that at the root of all of this you know know, talking about gold coins, silver coins, is precious metal. And I find it fascinating, the history of gold. I mean, there's too much to go into here. But essentially, gold is only a precious metal for a handful of reasons. The biggest one being that it's pretty. If gold wasn't the color it was, if it wasn't shiny, if it wasn't reasonably hard to find and therefore

have a little bit of rarity to it, no one would ever have used gold to make necklaces, earrings, jewelry, et cetera. Or money. Or money, exactly. We would have had to find some other substance. I hadn't realized that the concept of digital cash was as old as it is. I sort of think of Bitcoin, you know, it's very much a 21st century invention. In 1983, there was a fellow called David Chalm who wrote a research paper called Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments.

And every drug dealer in the world read it. And he put forward this theory of hypothetical digital currency, that it doesn't actually need to be physical anymore. It can just be represented digitally in one's bank account or whatever. But 1983, I hadn't realized it went back that far. And this fellow was also um sort of one of the first people to talk about blockchain and and all that sort of stuff okay um but yes 1983 wow but getting it out of a wall you can't get virtual money out of a wall can you no you

can't no because that that's that's not been around that long either that's been around since like 1967 really atms have only been around since the mid-60s? And British. Hurrah. Barclays. Did we invent the ATM? So, yes. So the very first ATM was British.

Oh, well done us. And it was in Enfield. Enfield. Outside of Barclays Bank. And the first person to take money out of an ATM was an actor who was quite famous at the time called reg varney oh i recognize the name now rich varney was was was famous for his appearances on a tv show which was incredibly inappropriate called on the buses oh yes which was uh which would never get on air but was very popular at the time. Great.

Have you done any research into the Guinness Book of World Records? Yes, I have. I came up with nothing. I tried to find some interesting records about money. It's so broad a subject. You know, the most amount of money ever paid for this, or the wealthiest person, wealthiest company, wealthiest country. Just too much. I found a couple of loosely financial-based kind of records.

The world's biggest piggy bank is in Ludwigsburg in Germany, and it's 18 feet high. It's bright red, and it's made of fiberglass and reinforced plastic um slightly tenuous but there it is i do like a record largest human currency symbol okay this was a very odd thing to to find um but in 2018 1717 people got together and stood in the design of the Indian rupee symbol. And a photo was taken of it from above. But is that really a record about money? Not sure.

Or people. Exactly. Or symbols. Or symbols. I know that the largest coin ever minted was minted in 2007 in Canada. Right. It's called the Big Maple Leaf, the BML. And in Canadian dollars, it's a million dollar coin. Oh, my goodness. or 3,215 troy ounces. Five of these coins were produced by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007

at their Ottawa facility where the first big maple leaf produced is still in storage. Oh, my goodness. Can you imagine a million-dollar coin? That's only got a very, very few limited uses in life hasn't it yeah um it's quite interesting one of them was nicked from a museum in in 2017 crikey um yeah and by that time the value had actually gone up to about four million dollars sheesh imagine taking that into your local bank and asking for change. It was an inch thick and 20 inches in diameter. Oh heck. Okay. It's big.

That's very big isn't it? It's a very very big coin. So in the UK obviously the Bank of England is the big one where all the money comes from. The old lady of Threadneedle Street. That one. But there are several other banks who are entitled in the UK to issue banknotes. Oh, really? So the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank are all entitled to issue banknotes in the UK. As in

Ireland, in Northern Ireland, the Bank of Ireland and the Ulster Bank, which is part of the NatWest Bank, are entitled to issue banknotes, as is, and this is really great. You remember, there was an episode where we talked about Danegeld? Yes, was that in the Vikings episode? Yes, in the Vikings episode. Well, the Northern Bank in Northern Ireland, they actually issue banknotes on Danske Bank. So technically, that's Dengeld. Oh, that's brilliant. Who knew? I have no more facts.

I have been shortchanged. My pockets are empty. My wallet is bare. I have no more facts. I have been shortchanged. My pockets are empty. My wallet is bare. I have no more facts. Long pockets, short arms. Short arms. Exactly. Yeah, I'm finding myself a bit skint now as well.

As we've both run out of interesting money facts, we could go with the boring ones. No, let's not go with the boring ones. Who wants that kind of podcast? Exactly. Not me. Exactly. So, like, subscribe, share, tell people. Go out

into the street right now and shout at the top of your voice, listen to Factorily. You won't be met with any amount of suspicion whatsoever. Thank you all very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this episode and please come again next time for more

Factorily. Goodbye.