On this episode of Odd Lots, we take a stroll back in time to see how the Bank of England functioned before computers, telephones and even the telegraph.
(Bloomberg) — We’re used to thinking of modern finance as practically synonymous with computers. Banks are basically just big collections of Excel spreadsheets, keeping track of who owes what to whom. And most trading nowadays is done by clicking a button on a screen. But how did all of this work before we had this type of technology? And what can previous technological revolutions tell us about the direction of new ones, such as the potential deployment of artificial intelligence?In this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Anne Murphy, a history professor at the University of Portsmouth in the UK and author of Virtuous Bankers: A Day in the Life of the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England, as well as John Handel, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce. Together, they walk us through how banking and finance was done in the days before computers, telephones and even the telegraph.
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