Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word capitalism entered the English language in 1854 through the novel The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray. Socialist critics like Louis Blanc and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had already used the term to describe a system where capital was appropriated by some to the exclusion of others.
The Industrial Revolution began in the mid-18th century and saw industrialists replace merchants as a dominant factor in the capitalist system. This period established the factory system of manufacturing and marked the development of the capitalist mode of production.
The United Kingdom first formally adopted the gold standard in 1821. From the 1870s to the early 1920s, the global financial system was mainly tied to the gold standard.
Ronald Reagan served as president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. His administration gained increasing prominence for monetarism, a modification of Keynesianism that is more compatible with laissez-faire analyses.
Friedrich Hayek published his book The Road to Serfdom in 1944. He asserted that the free-market understanding of economic freedom as present in capitalism is a requisite of political freedom.
Thomas Piketty published his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2013. He asserted that inequality is the inevitable consequence of economic growth in a capitalist economy and the resulting concentration of wealth can destabilize democratic societies.