ARGOS OR AMAZON: WHO DID IT FIRST?

You can thank an in-flight catalogue, not the internet, for the emergence of convenient same-day deliveries

- ALEKS KROTOSKI

We have been led to believe that the internet is a new idea. Yes, it is indeed something of a marvel, but the things we think it invented are mostly things we were already heading towards before it arrived on the scene.

Let's start with next-day delivery. Thirty-two years ago, back in 1990, a man named Bob Worsley had a dream of a new kind of shopping experience. It would be an updated version of the Argos catalogue, an on-the-go, one-stop hub of the things people needed but didn't know it until they'd been told they needed it by reading enthusiastic descriptions. A hot dog warmer! A self-winding wristwatch display case! A statue of a zombie boy crawling out of the earth! SkyMall had them all.