Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy

by Tim Harford

Now comes the elegant part. The stick would be split in half, down its length from one end to the other. The debtor would retain half, called the “foil.” The creditor would retain the other half, called the “stock”—even today, British bankers use the word “stocks” to refer to debts of the British government. Because willow has a natural and distinctive grain, the two halves would match only each other. Of course, the English Treasury could simply have kept a record of these transactions in a ledger. But the tally stick system enabled something radical to occur. If you had a tally stick showing that Bishop Basset owed you five pounds, then unless you worried that the bishop wasn’t good for the money, the tally stick itself was worth close to five pounds in its own right. If you wanted to buy something, you might well find that the seller would be pleased to accept the tally stick as a safe and convenient form of payment.