The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago needed a centerpiece attraction. It had to be novel, different. Daniel Burnham wanted something to rival Gustave Eiffel’s tower built for the 1889 Exposition in Paris.

Proposals came in from everywhere. Everyone had the same mindset — a bigger tower. A log tower 500 feet taller than Eiffel’s, a telescoping tower, and an 8,947-foot tower with an elevator to the top and toboggans to get down were proposed. Even Eiffel submitted a larger version of his tower for the fair. It was denied.

Burnham wanted something unique. So he challenged American engineers to come up with something spectacular.

George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. accepted the challenge. The idea came to him in a momentary flash. He envisioned a giant steel “bicycle” wheel, 250 feet in diameter carrying 36 cars that could hold 60 people each. A complete revolution of his wheel would propel 2,160 people around in 20 minutes. Continue Reading…

Did you expect a market crash in 2020?

How bad did you think the market crash would be?

How quickly did you think the market would recover?

Are you sure that’s what you thought?

Our minds play tricks on us. The worst part is knowing about it doesn’t help. Hindsight bias is one such trick that messes with our memories in a couple of different ways.

• We tend to look back on our past predictions as being more accurate than they were.
• We tend to look back on events as being more foreseeable than they were at the time.

Richards Heuer, in Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, related a couple of examples. Continue Reading…

John Henry Patterson took a company that three previous owners failed to make profitable, built it into a global success, and changed how businesses worked. He did it selling cash registers.

There was just one problem. Nobody had a clue why they needed a cash register.

The cash register was invented in 1879 by a man named James Ritty. Ritty tried to make it into a business but failed. So he sold to another guy. He failed too and sold it to a local group of investors, who also failed.

When Patterson bought the company in 1884, not much had changed in those five years. Other than a few sales to saloon and store owners, most people were skeptical of the machines. In fact, local business owners mocked Patterson for buying a horrible company that had no demand for its product.

So Patterson set out to create demand. Continue Reading…