介绍:
Welcome to Money Matters, presented by Jimmy Stevens. Today we’re going to talk about four of the best money-making ideas in history. What do you think this is? It’s a food which you don’t eat. It’s a sweet which is made of rubber. It’s chewing gum! Chewing gum was originally made from chicle, a plant from Central and South America, but now many gum companies use rubber. No one knows who first used chewing gum, but it was in 1891 that Wrigley Company started making and selling it. Many people say it helps them to concentrate, and the US army gives gum to its soldiers for this reason. Today the industry is worth nearly 20 billion dollars a year. On to our next big moneymaker. The first telephone that could be carried around was invented in 1908. In the 1954 film, Sabrina, a character played by actor Humphrey Bogart made a call from the back of his car! But it was in 1973 that the modern mobile phone was invented by an American, Martin Cooper, and in the 1980s “mobiles” started to become popular. Many countries, including the UK, now have more mobile phones than people. Next is the iPod. It’s small and light. It plays and stores music. A company called Apple invented it, but Vinnie Chieco was the man that gave the iPod its name. He saw the machine and thought of a line from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Open the pod bay door, Hal!” The iPod arrived on the market in 2001. In 2007, from January to March, Apple earned 1.8 billion pounds from iPod sales. Our final big moneymaker is all about making money. In 1934 Charles Darrow showed a game to a company called Parker Brothers. Did they want to invest in it? No, they didn’t. So, with a friend who worked in a printing company, Mr. Darrow made 500 copies of the game and started selling them under the name “Monopoly”. The idea of the game is to buy streets where you can build houses and hotels. It soon became popular and Parker Brothers agreed to produce it. Today the owners say they’ve sold over 200 million Monopoly sets and 750 million people have played it. The game is truly international: It’s sold in 103 countries and in 37 languages.
大家还在听
