Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

• Mon, 12:42: So MS sold 20% of its Facebook stock for $10M more than it paid for it all. So the remaining 80% is pure profit no matter what happens.
• Mon, 13:04: @manan And if it all goes horribly sideways, it's a hefty chunk that can be offset against capital gains :-)
• Mon, 14:01: From the ridiculous (extra strength Mexican espresso) to the sublime (sencha).
• Mon, 15:12: The Bee's Eye View http://t.co/JKn8biNq
• Mon, 17:30: Countdown to the OnLive shareholder lawsuits?
• Mon, 18:32: @PatrickHenebry I'd disagree. It actually removes steps that were necessary with the old Start menu. One click less to any app. @edbott
• Mon, 18:43: RT @major_clanger: When your hero has George Galloway for an apologist, surely you must realise something is fishy.
• Mon, 18:49: Another hot and humid day in London. Maybe made worse by having too many machines online :-)
• Mon, 19:51: Got music to play to an Xbox from a Windows 8 tablet. Xbox was slow to show up as a media render. Sounds good through Naim and Linn though!
• Mon, 20:14: Into The Sun http://t.co/TJrVDjKG

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Apple recently achieved a market capitalisation of over $620 billion, and has been touted as the biggest company ever. That's impressive, but is it really the biggest company ever?

What about, say, the South Sea Company?

At its peak in 1720 its shares were trading for £1050 each. So how much was it worth?

Time to do a little calculation!

As far as I can find out, around 3.5 million shares were released, which gives it a peak value of £3.675 billion. But that's in 1720 pounds. There's been a lot of economic movement since then, so what could that be in 2012 pounds?

I found a useful web site, Measuring Worth, that contains the tools for calculating the relative worth of various currencies at various dates.

Using its tools it turns out that the South Sea Company would have been worth at the low end £429 billion in 2012 pounds, but at the high end £49.3 trillion.

Which at a £/$ exchange rate of around 1.5, gives us a top end value of $73.8 trillion.

I think the UK can claim that record then.

It's just a pity about happened next.