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•148 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

There is an apocryphal story that emanated from the aerospace industry in the
1970s. It originated in the UK so it could well be put down to stereotyping and
prejudice, but it went like this.

‘Guided missiles have two main elements, the guidance system and the explo-
sive. The difference between an American missile and a British one is the degree of
expenditure and sophistication between these two elements. If a missile cost $1
million, the Americans would spend $750,000 on the explosive and the remainder
on the guidance system. The British on the other hand would spend only $250,000
on the explosive leaving $750,000 for the guidance system.

‘The effect of this was that the British missile would seek, for example, an en-
emy plane with pinpoint accuracy and get very close to the engine of the plane. In
this case a relatively small “pop” would be enough to down the aircraft. The Ameri-
can type would get into roughly the same area as the aircraft and then a huge explo-
sion would account for anything in the region.’

This only leaves the use of explosives in safe cracking. I can never forget the
black humour of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They too, on one
occasion, overdid the use of explosives when they meant to blow open a safe that
was being transported in a train, but actually blew the whole train into fragments
causing a rainfall of the dollar bills in the safe.

Idea 85 – Radio

The number of products and services that owe their existence to radio must make
the discovery of radio waves and the development of devices that operate with radio
one of the greatest enablers of business.

Transmission and detection of communications signals, radio, consists of elec-
tromagnetic waves that travel through the air in a straight line or by deflection from
the ionosphere or from a communications satellite.