The writer is author of ‘Exponential’

In 1908, the first Model T Ford came off the production line in Highland Park, Michigan. Over the coming decades, they would revolutionise not just the automotive market but the shape of our economies, cities and working lives. The magic seemingly lay in how the cars became increasingly affordable: a tool for the average citizen, not merely the very wealthy. Those first Model Ts set buyers back about $27,000 in today’s terms. By 1923, they were rolling off the production line for about a quarter of the price.

That incredible deflation for a then-breakthrough technology was not magic, nor unique. Rather, it was a consequence of “learning by doing”: as Ford’s engineers built more cars, they got smarter, defter and more efficient. In coming down this experience curve, the Model T became cheaper and, ultimately, ubiquitous. Some years later, Theodore Wright, an aeronautical engineer, was the first to describe this relationship quantitatively. He spotted that for every doubling of production, the cost of producing a new airframe dropped about 15 per cent. Experience is really a gift.