Inventions you love from another country

I want to thank my neighbor's tom the north for plastic trash bags


In the 1950s, Winnipeg’s Harry Wasylyk used the flexible plastic polyethylene to create the first garbage bag,

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Semiconductors, c. 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Labs.

My father always used to laugh about this one because he showed me a newspaper clipping from the Washington Post's "science editor" who wrote an article that talked about how Bell Labs physicists had "invented a new type of transistor vacuum tube".

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

The Germans invented the car, right? That was kinda cool. Thanks, Germany. I also like Lager Beer and Wurst.

Yeah sure, I suppose but if you want to include ANY self propelled wagon you'd have to go back to Cugnot and his steam powered cannon truck, or even Markus and his automobile which he was forced to hide behind a false wall in Vienna to hide it from the Germans.

 

[lwf]

Here is a couple that might interest americans.

The splitting of the atom and paving the way for an atomic bomb. Ernest Rutherford New zealand

The first man made flight. 31 March 1902, more than 18 months before the Wright brothers. Later, witnesses reported that Pearse flew 400 metres and soft-landed on a hedge on his Timaru farm. Richard Pearse new aealand.

Richard Pearse denied this.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

And we haven't even entered into the whole long winded argument about who invented the TELEVISION.
Scotsmen insist that John Logie Baird invented television, if you can count 30-line vertical resolution on a spinning disk with barely recognizable faces as "television".

 

[soylentgreen]

Granted. But then, literally every human invention builds on the work or findings of a predecessor. The atomic bomb could not have been invented, tested and anywhere else but the United States in the middle of World War 2. No other nation had the material capacity to bring the human capital or resources together to work on Manhattan project at that point in history to apply practice to theory.

Is that not a bit like arguing that you provided the football ground where some football players made their fame. I think the term for that is hanging onto the coattails.

 

[soylentgreen]

In 1915 Pearse wrote in a letter to a newspaper:

And he was right. The honours were given to those who shouted the loudest rather than the person who actually did the deed.

 

[soylentgreen]

Richard Pearse denied this.

No he did not deny this. He wrote that history will probably not remember him. And he was right. He pointed out that it was france that had done most of the leg work from their experiments with early hot air balloon flight and that they were designing and building plains after they were invented. And of course that the wright brothers were the first to advertise their flight to the world.

 

[Juks]

I'm not sure if it was invented here, but a lot of power that the USA has comes from how much of the worlds money flows through various entities based in it.

Adam Smith 1776 UK......

 

[Felis Leo]

And we haven't even entered into the whole long winded argument about who invented the TELEVISION.
Scotsmen insist that John Logie Baird invented television, if you can count 30-line vertical resolution on a spinning disk with barely recognizable faces as "television".

Uh huh. Perhaps the inventor of the zoetrope should be attributed with the invention of the television as well. Moving images and all.

Philo Farnsworth invented the actual television.

Philo Farnsworth - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Felis Leo]

Is that not a bit like arguing that you provided the football ground where some football players made their fame. I think the term for that is hanging onto the coattails.

My point is that all inventions are riding on someone’s coattails. I would say that what you seem to be arguing is the equivalent of claiming that the inventors of an alphabet should also be credited with the authorship of any and all subsequent written works in that language.

 

[lwf]

No he did not deny this. He wrote that history will probably not remember him. And he was right. He pointed out that it was france that had done most of the leg work from their experiments with early hot air balloon flight and that they were designing and building plains after they were invented. And of course that the wright brothers were the first to advertise their flight to the world.

Yes he did. Read the link. He said, and I quote: "I conceived the idea of inventing a flying machine. I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904." He may have conceived of the idea of a working aircraft before the Wright Brothers did, (highly debateable and impossible to prove,) but he was not the first to demonstrate heavier than air flight. The Wright Brothers were.

New Zealand is not the only country that has a tradition of falsely claiming the first flight. Brazil does the same thing. They claim that Alberto Santos-Dumont was the first to demonstrate powered flight. Germany has their own claim. But it is widely agreed upon that it was the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk that was the first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_flight

 

[soylentgreen]

My point is that all inventions are riding on someone’s coattails. I would say that what you seem to be arguing is the equivalent of claiming that the inventors of an alphabet should also be credited with the authorship of any and all subsequent written works in that language.

Not likely as the alphabet is a continuous invention changing with every generation. But specific objects can be said to be created by specific people such as the atom bomb. Not by where they were invented.

 

[soylentgreen]

Yes he did. Read the link. He said, and I quote: "I conceived the idea of inventing a flying machine. I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904." He may have conceived of the idea of a working aircraft before the Wright Brothers did, (highly debateable and impossible to prove,) but he was not the first to demonstrate heavier than air flight. The Wright Brothers were.

New Zealand is not the only country that has a tradition of falsely claiming the first flight. Brazil does the same thing. They claim that Alberto Santos-Dumont was the first to demonstrate powered flight. Germany has their own claim. But it is widely agreed upon that it was the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk that was the first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_flight

He denied he got a good flight, not a flight.

1903 March 31, Tuesday
Eyewitnesses describe Pearse crashing into a hedge during 1903.[26][27] His monoplane may have risen to a height of at least 12 feet (3.7 m) on each occasion.[12]: 60–72  Evidence exists that on 31 March 1903 Pearse achieved a powered, though poorly controlled, flight of several hundred metres.[2]: 62–72 

 

[Lovebug]

Most things weren't actually invented here.

16 things you thought were invented in the US — but weren't

Apple pie, hot dogs, peanut butter — many things you thought were invented in the USA were actually created in other countries.

www.insider.com

Necessity and all that.
Great article

 

[lwf]

He denied he got a good flight, not a flight.

He said he didn't attempt anything practical with the idea of a flying machine until 1904.