‘Until 1840 the word “risk” was a technical term for the commodity bought and sold in an insurance contract and had very little colloquial usage. Afterwards “risk” became a commonly used extension of the liberal ideal of self-ownership.’
‘The Turk, as Kempelen called his invention, was a life-size automaton carved out of maple wood, dressed in Ottoman robes, sitting behind a wooden cabinet with a chessboard on top.Kempelen claimed that the machine could defeat any member of the court, and one of Maria Theresa’s advisers took up the challenge. Kempelen opened the doors of the cabinet to show a clockwork-like mechanism—an intricate network of levers and cogs—and then inserted a key into the machine and wound it up. The automaton came to life, lifting its wooden arm to move the first chess piece. Within 30 minutes, it defeated its opponent.’
‘A heritage brand is one with a positioning and value proposition based on its heritage. The work grew from our lengthy study of Monarchies as corporate brands. We describe how to identify the heritage that may reside in a brand and how to nurture, maintain, and protect it, particularly through the management mindset of brand stewardship to generate stronger corporate marketing.’
‘In Victorian society, women of the middle class were particularly vulnerable to white-collar crimes. Denied opportunities to earn their own living, single luomen were especially dependent on invested capital. Women, in fact, made up a significant portion of investors during the nineteenth century, especially in such key areas of the economy as banking, railways and insurance. Yet, bourgeois notions of gentility required that women remain ignorant of money matters and refrain from active participation in business affairs, leaving women especially exposed to all manner of fraud and malfeasance.’
‘Contracts for future delivery of commodities spread from Mesopotamia to Hellenistic Egypt and the Roman world. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, contracts for future delivery continued to be used in the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and they survived in canon law in western Europe… The first derivatives on securities were written in the Low Countries in the sixteenth century. Derivative trading on securities spread from Amsterdam to England and France at the turn of the 17th to the 18th century, and from France to Germany in the early 19th century.’
