October 18 in business history: two cents an acre, a $2 million radio, and a veto overridden 247 to 23

Three 18 Octobers share a habit: the payment came before the evidence. In 1867 the United States bought a territory at two cents an acre. In 1954 an electronics firm spent a tenth of its revenue on a radio. In 1972 Congress put $18 billion behind sewage plants that were still on paper.

On 18 October 1867 the United States formally took possession of Alaska. The agreed price was $7.2 million, less than two cents an acre for 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas. In today's money that is about $132 million. 1

Russia had reasons to sell. The colony was remote, hard to defend against Britain, and the sea otter trade that paid for it had collapsed; a population once counted at 300,000 animals was nearly extinct. 2 Russia also needed money after losing the Crimean War, and nearly all its settlers left once the transfer was complete. 2

American papers called the purchase "Seward's Folly" and "Andrew Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," and treated the land as barren. 1

Gold at Nome in 1899 started a rush, and Alaska became a state in 1959. 1 Today it supplies about a quarter of America's oil and more than half of its seafood. 1

The state also saved part of what the land produced. The Alaska Permanent Fund, built from a share of oil revenue, held $91.5 billion at the end of its 2026 fiscal year. Its annual payout supplies more than two thirds of Alaska's general fund revenue. 3

Decision mirror: Constellation Energy signed a 20-year agreement with Microsoft in September 2024 to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1, which it had shut in 2019 because the plant could not earn its cost. 4 Microsoft buys about 835 megawatts from the renewed plant, matching the power its data centres draw from the grid. 4

On 18 October 1954 Texas Instruments announced the first commercial transistor radio. It reached shops in New York and Los Angeles on 1 November at $49.95. 5

Texas Instruments had grown out of a maker of seismic instruments for oil drillers. It bought a licence to Bell Labs' transistor patents in 1952 for $25,000. 5

The obstacle was price. Germanium transistors cost $10 to $15 each, against about a dollar for a vacuum tube, so radio makers stayed with tubes. 5

In May 1954 Patrick Haggerty, a vice president, gave his engineers a week to build a working radio. They delivered a breadboard in four days. Haggerty then committed $2 million to turning it into a product, just under 10% of company revenue. The deadline was that year's Christmas shopping season. 5

The manufacturer was Industrial Development Engineering Associates of Indianapolis, a builder of television antenna boosters. 5 Texas Instruments supplied the parts. The smaller firm sold the radio under its Regency brand, using four transistors where the prototype had eight, to hold the price down. 5

More than 100,000 sold in the first year, and the radio never earned much. 5 The part did. Haggerty drove the transistor price to about $2.50, and the contract put the project's patents in the public domain so Texas Instruments could sell transistors to any buyer. 5

Within a few years both firms had left the AM radio business, and Sony's first transistor radio arrived in August 1955. 5 Haggerty later estimated that the pocket radio pulled the market for transistorised consumer goods forward by two years. 5

Decision mirror: In September 2025 Nvidia said it intended to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, released as each gigawatt of its own systems is deployed. 6 The commitment covers at least 10 gigawatts, with the first coming online in the second half of 2026. 6

On 18 October 1972 the House voted 247 to 23 to override President Nixon's veto of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments. 7 The Senate had done the same, 52 to 12, two hours after Nixon rejected the bill around midnight. 7

Nixon called the $24 billion price tag "unconscionable," and had proposed $6 billion over three years instead. 8

The bill authorised $24.7 billion, including more than $18 billion in federal grants to states for sewage treatment plants. 9 It set a national goal of no pollutant discharges by 1985, and an interim goal of water safe for fishing and swimming. 9 At the time, a third of the country's waters met that second test. 10

Fifty-four years on, the work is still being paid for. The Environmental Protection Agency's latest survey put documented clean water needs at $630.1 billion for the 20 years from 2022, up 73% from $336 billion in 2012. 11

Decision mirror: The EPA's 2024 rule on PFAS in drinking water set limits of 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS and gave water systems until April 2029 to comply. 12 The agency put the cost at about $1.5 billion a year, and expected 4,100 to 6,700 systems to install treatment. 12 In 2026 it offered up to two additional years, to April 2031, and proposed to withdraw the standards for four other PFAS. 13