A genuine sensation at a time when sheet-music sales provided the metric for success, "Maple Leaf Rag" probably won some of its admirers firsthand, so to speak, as they grappled with the canny arpeggios juddering through the song.
"All of the images in here influence art students," says Jeff Sawtell, a working artist who remembers taking students into the V&A for drawing classes in the 60s and 70s, a time when long sheets of canvas and charcoal could be used without issue.
At a time when balance sheets are tight, Bansal says companies are eager to parse data and come up with more efficient systems.
A recent and critical historical event was the Last Glacial Maximum, a time when ice sheets covered much of present-day temperate North America.
Vodafone also has the advantage of deep pockets, flush with $19.7 billion from the sale of Orange, a mobile phone company, to France Telecom, at a time when the balance sheets of other telecommunications companies are stretched by the costs of new services.
In the not-so-distant future, it's easy to foresee a time when a one-sheet becomes a interactive, multimedia portfolio of your skills and greatest hits.
The deal comes amid growing interest by Chinese companies in making bold overseas acquisitions at a time when their balance sheets are fat from strong gains in the domestic share markets.
Freund argues that the market volatility – tied more to the European debt crisis and concerns over global growth than S&P's downgrade of the U.S. AAA credit rating – comes at a time when corporate balance sheets are much healthier than they were three years ago, liquidity has not dried up and leverage is far lower.
The Table was formed in the early Holocene at a time when the Cordilleran ice sheet covered the region.
"Vodafone is in a strong position in regard to the strength of its balance sheet at a time when many telecom companies have stretched balance sheets," said Douglas Wight, an analyst with Commerzbank in London.
