British inventions and how America compares?

Question

Ok Scottish people invented the television and the telephone whilst the English invented useful things like the fire extinguisher and the jet engine.

While we were busy inventing these things the best the yanks could come up with was 52 inch trousers for teenagers and buses for whites only.

Just why are we Brits so superior to our forgotten colony?

Answer 1

Isn't it amazing that American's can only answer a question like this by saying "...but, we won the war for you!".

He-Man ; Shut up and eat another cheeseburger, you w*anker.

Answer 2

It's not that straight forward is it? Very little is invented or discovered in isolation. Much depends on the work of predecessors or uncredited assistants. Often people in different places work separately and achieve similar results. The one who gets the credit is generally the one who generates most publicity or who gets to the patent office first.
Then how do you treat inventions where the people working on it came from different countries or where someone is working in a country which is not their own. e.g. The first moving images where filmed on Leeds Bridge in England by a Frenchman, Louis Le Prince. Radium was discovered in France by Marie and Pierre Curie who were Polish and French respectively. The first sewing machine was invented in Britain by a German.

However everyone knows the Americans waited to see who was winning before joining either of the world wars.

Had to add an edit
It’s not time Dude is short of but facts.
First internal combustion engine was invented by Otto Benz (Heard of Mercedes Benz?)
The German Karl Jatho flew four months before the American Wright brothers
Benjamin Franklin’s theory of electricity mirrored those of the ancient Greeks and it’s possible the Babylonians used a primitive form of galvanic cell.
The electric light bulb was patented by Joseph Swan in Britain a year before Edison took out a US patent.
Plasma is a component of blood but I assume you are referring to the separation of blood components so I’ll give you that one, the polio vaccine and the artificial heart. Though the polio vaccine would have been impossible without Louis Pastures’ (France) work on vaccination.
The French physicist Henri Becquerel discovered nuclear energy in 1896.
In the 18th 7 19th centuries the Spanish & Germans worked on various sysyems of telegraphs but the first commercial one was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and used on the Great Western Railway, running down the west side of England.
Xani has already told you about the telephone.
In 1837 Charles Babbage designed his Analytical Engine (the first recognisable computer) in Britain.
The Scot John Logie Baird produced the first recognisable television images but like many scientists his work depended on the work of many other, primarily from Germany, France and Russia.

Answer 3

Hey, we gave the world the chocolate chip cookie, jazz, rock and roll, soul, and Gospel music. Oh, I forgot to mention the light bulb, airplanes, the telegraph, the elevator, the first practical refrigerator and air conditioner, airbags, the transformer, air brakes, the first true submarines (they worked), the band-aid, scripted programs to watch on television, the first personal computer and of course, Americans developed yahoo, which you are using right now. You should stop using all these items in order to rid yourself of any American influence.

We also developed the atom bomb, but we don't use that so much.

There was more, but I was tired of listing inventions - it was beginning to feel like a school report. A country with the British National Party and with it's history of injustice in Ireland and India really shouldn't point the finger at the US as an example of discrimination and racism . Why are you so cranky? Have you ever been to America or do you just judge it from the TV?

Besides Leonardo da Vinci dreamed it all up ages before anyone. The same ideas float around several places at the same time. Lighten up - it's a big world, everyone contributes. I thought we Americans were supposed to be the ones beating our chests about superiority...blah blah blah

And Lee, you might want to review your WW2 history. We were neutral (although helping Great Britian on the sly) until Pearl Harbor. We weren't waiting to see who was winning, because the British certainly weren't. You withstood the Blitz, but you were recieving aid in food, arms and more from the US long before we entered the war.

Answer 4

1849 Antonio Meucci demonstrates a device he later called a telephone to individuals in Havana. (The demonstration involves direct electrical connections to people.) Only in the last ten years, however, has the British government announced that it now recognizes (primarily for educational purposes) Antonio Meucc as the first inventor of the telephone

The identity of the inventor of the electric telephone remains in dispute. Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray, amongst others, have all been credited with the invention.

Answer 5

I guess electricity wasn't a very big invention and flying is something we could do with out. But it occurred to me while you were on you rant, you wouldn't even be able to ask this question had US fliers not volunteered to help out the HMS Air Force when Hitler declared war against England.

We lost a lot of good men that could have worn those 52 inch trousers

Answer 6

The only invention that matters in this forum is the internet, and it was an Englishman who first created a rudimentary form of it for the military! Of course, as usual, the Yanks steamed in and took control of it. Added advertising and claimed it as their own!

Answer 7

We have not really done a lot recently. Clockwork radio, Tomb Raider... that's about it. Then again lots of British inventors have moved to the States in recent decades as nobody here funds inventors anymore.

Answer 8

I'll take the chocolate Ice Cream Sundae, thank you, with extra sprinkles!

Answer 9

American inventions--automobile,aircraft electricity, electric lights,artificial heart, plasma, atomic energy ,telegraph, telephone, polio vaccine, computers, television,,,I would go on but I don't have all day.

Answer 10

chuckle.
hot dogs/ sports with over-sized padding

whats hms airforce??am confused-- sea planes ???