Plastic Through the Ages (and Sometimes It's Paper)

Thanks to Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing, I found this link to a visual history of credit cards.

Starting in 1951 with Diner's Club, the credit card "concept" grew rapidly in the 1950s. The 1960s and very early 1970s saw the beginning of major marketing efforts by American Express, Bank Americard (later Visa) and Master Charge (the former name of MasterCard, remember that?).

By 1984, 70 percent of adults had a credit card. And, as I recall, businesses on the east coast had stopped taking checks, and you couldn't rent a car without plastic.

My favorite factoid from the slideshow is the bit about the Austin Powers Titanium Visa card, for which card-holders were charged 10.9 percent interest (vs. 9.9 percent for a regular Titanium Visa card). Yeah, baby, yeah -- now that's some rational consumer behavior!