If you enjoyed this article, I can recommend the author's book "Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy" (mentioned at the end of the article). The inventions are not what you might think and it was a pretty enlightening read, at least for me.
Also the World Service 50 episode podcast of those inventions - all freely available. I always thought it a bit odd they renamed it from "50 things" to "50 inventions" for the US book release.
