Whole brain not needed for handling money

Mention to any friends who are bankers or accountants that science has shown they could have a frontal lobotomy and still do their job, and see how they react.

Click to enlarge

Posted By: Alex - Mon Sep 04, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Money, Experiments, Psychology, 1930s

Bank Robber Immobilizing Vestibule

So near as I can interpret this patent, in front of every bank teller's window is erected a revolving-door chamber. The customer--or robber--must enter the chamber, which revolves shut behind him. A good customer is allowed by the clerk's pressing of a switch to exit. The robber is held in place. What could go wrong?

Posted By: Paul - Thu Aug 17, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Crime, Inventions, Patents, Money, Innocent Bystanders, Passersby, Witnesses and Accidental Victims, 1940s

Cash Amnesia

The term "cash amnesia" describes using cash for purchases you don't want to be reminded of later (such as "guilty pleasures and other hard-to-justify purchases"). As opposed to using a credit card, where you'll see the purchases on your statement later.

Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business studied whether people really now use cash in this way by analyzing purchases at the Stanford Bookstore. They concluded that "customers were more likely to pay in cash for harder-to-justify items like stuffed plush mascots and Christmas ornaments."

Makes sense to me. I don't often carry cash in my wallet, but when I do it always feels like I've got free money to spend — because anything I buy with it won't bump up that month's credit card bill.

More info: stanford.edu

Posted By: Alex - Sun Aug 06, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Money, Psychology

James Eads How, The Millionaire Hobo

His Wikipedia page.

In addition to advocating for hobos, How chose to live as one, even though he had both money and education. He wore a shaggy beard and rough tramplike clothes. It was said that even ordinary hobos looked well dressed compared to How.[3] From about age 25, he traveled around doing hard work for a living.[11] One of How's contemporaries, sociologist Nels Anderson, describes how fully How immersed himself in the hobo lifestyle and how seriously How took his work:

Millionaire that he is, How has not failed to familiarize himself with every aspect of tramp life. He knows the life better than many of the veteran hobos. He has become so thoroughly absorbed in the work of what he describes as organizing the "migratory, casual, and unemployed"...workers that he practically loses interest in himself. He becomes obsessed with some task at times that he will walk the streets all day without stopping long enough to eat.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jun 10, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Bums, Hobos, Tramps, Beggars, Panhandlers and Other Streetpeople, Eccentrics, Money, Twentieth Century

Shoes sold for peanuts

We've previously posted about cases in which advertisers used the word 'bananas' as slang for dollars, and then had to sell the product (a car and a stereo system) for the appropriate number of bananas.

Here's the identical situation, but with peanuts.

Macon Chronicle-Herald - Sep 13, 1949

Posted By: Alex - Wed May 24, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Money, 1940s

How Now, Dow Jones

The weird premises of certain Broadway shows is a theme encountered before on WU. Here's another instance.

How Now, Dow Jones, set in Wall Street, follows Kate who announces the Dow Jones numbers. Her fiancé will not marry her until the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 1,000.

The author William Goldman offers his analysis.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 22, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Money, Music, Theater and Stage, 1960s

America’s Fascist Dime

In 1916, the U.S. Mint introduced a dime that had, on one side, an image of the Fasces — a bundle of sticks that served as a symbol of authority in ancient Rome. The Fasces were also the source of the term 'fascism.' So as fascism emerged in Europe, it became increasingly awkward that the U.S. had a fascist symbol on its money. Finally, in 1945, the "fascist dime" was retired.



There have long been rumors that fascist supporters somehow managed to get the symbol on the dime. But mainstream opinion is that the presence of the symbol on the dime was just a weird accident. GovMint.com notes that Adolph Weinman had designed the dime in 1916, "three years BEFORE the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini adopted this symbol for his cruel regime."

Of course, it could have been worse. At least they didn't put a swastika on the dime.

More info: Numismatic News, Wikipedia

Posted By: Alex - Tue Apr 18, 2023 - Comments (8)
Category: Money

Music of the NY Times Financial Section

I posted a month ago about Rhapsody in Big Blue, which was Darryl Gammill's transformation of the stock price of IBM into music. It turns out that Gammill wasn't the first to use asset prices as the basis for music. Back in the 1930s, composer Joseph Schillinger came up with a system that allowed him to convert "fluctuations in wholesale prices of agricultural produce," as listed on the NY Times financial page, into music. Details from A Thing or Two About Music by Nicolas Slonimsky:

Posted By: Alex - Mon Apr 10, 2023 - Comments (0)
Category: Money, Music

Unlikely Reasons for Murder No. 13

Source: The News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)03 Apr 1912

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 23, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Death, Money, Teenagers, 1910s

Old Money

Article source: The Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, Indiana) 09 Dec 1959, Wed Page 31

Posted By: Paul - Thu Dec 15, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Destruction, Government, Money, 1950s