The internet turned Captain Obvious into an insult. In 1916, somebody wrote a whole book making someone like him the hero. I read it last night because Rory Sutherland, the vice chairman of Ogilvy, calls it one of the most influential books of his career. He got handed it as a junior adman. When a mind like that keeps pointing at a 42-page story from 1916, you read the book and take notes! It's about a plain young man named Adams who gets rich doing the obvious thing the clever people were too clever to try. And it's harder than it sounds, because the obvious is the one thing we rarely think to look at. Here's what I mean. We had wheels for 5,000 years. We had suitcases for a century. Air travel was booming by the 1950s. And the wheeled suitcase didn't show up until 1970. The upright one you own didn't arrive until 1987, invented by an airline pilot who got tired of hauling his bag through the terminal. Is it obvious now? The cards below are the best of the book. Swipe through. We had wheels for 5,000 years and suitcases for 100. We put them together in 1970.