Britain vs the US: Who is the real tech titan?

10. @ kasino72.

I bet you were smiling inside though.

9. Stu531, I thought so too. And I wrote it. I wasn't trying to start a war :)

8. I thought it was an interesting light hearted article.

7. benjjneb, I've reworded it for you. "That is the genius of America. [Stealing other nations' great ideas and turning them] into meaningful improvements in the lives of ordinary people."

Yeah, that's America for you!! :-)

6. "So it is the BUSINESS of America, not the Genius of America."

You've missed the point entirely. That is the genius of America. Turning great ideas into meaningful improvements in the lives of ordinary people.

Look, I can't heal your hurt from not receiving the recognition, and compensation, that you deserved for your work. What you deserve you should get, believe me. I don't laud American capitalism as some infallible perfect system. It's the worst system there is, except for every other (to steal a quote from Churchill).

It is the "BUSINESS" of America that is her genius, we agree. The genius of invention brooks no monopoly. The hard work of applying that genius, it is valued nowhere else as it is in these 50 states.

5. I think that it's really stupid to talk about who or which country is the responsible of nowadays technology. There is no single origin point, it's just the interaction between many cultures that at the end comes up with ideas and inventions.

If we start moving to the past, at the end we can say that all the British inventions exist because once upon a time Romans gave the necessary basics to start a civilization, from laws, infrastructures, philosophy and they even founded London... We can go even further because almost all the knowledge Romans had, it just came from Greeks! Should we continue? It's meaningless to try to find a root, there is no root it's called collaboration and interaction.

4. @benjjneb

I can disagree with you on every point you made.

America may be the perfect economic condition to exploit other peoples ideas, but in no way did America have the social and educational structure that fostered free thinking individuals that are needed to create completely new inventions. So America may be the place where great ideas become great products (Well they did over most of the past century), but America was not the place where great men invented great new tools, and that is in essence what inventing is, not taking someone elses idea and funding it and putting a product on the shelf... that is called "BUSINESS". It is called "Bad Bisness" when the inventor does not get credit or any financial gain from his ORIGINAL idea, all the early work and research.

America did not make the light bulb the light bulb. The form, the function and the idea was already there before Edison stole it and made a personal fortune for himself. So no America did not "Make it the light bulb". Richard Pierce actually made the first plane, and it was a very modern monoplane, the base design is still used today in current microlights. So considering America just copied every feature and made a flying machine eventually that looked ... just like the monoplane Richard Pierce flew in before the Wright Brothers, it is hard to claim that "America made the Airplane the Airplane" since they just copied it as the form and function was already there six months before any American could get his **** off the ground.

So it is the BUSINESS of America, not the Genius of America. Look up the meaning of Genius in the Oxford Dictionary, you will find it means something completely different in general use. Though it is used as an American propaganda term to try to claim great things when in reality there is nothing great to be claimed.

3. The comments are exhibiting a common misapprehension of "American exceptionalism" in the realm of science and technology. Americans do not believe we are somehow more intelligent or more clever by virtue of being born American. In fact, we know we are not, we are a nation of immigrants after all. The exceptional nature of America is that it is the place in which great ideas become great contributions to mankind.

It can be entertaining to debate which was the first computer, or electronic computer, or electronic digital computer and so forth. It doesn't really matter though, the fundamental concept was emerging in various places, but only in America did it become the computer as we now know it.

Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML/HTTP, but America made it The Web. Various people will fight over the credit for the first lightbulb, the first computer, the first airplane, but America made them The Light Bulb, The Computer and The Airplane. And that is the greater contribution. The American dream is not that exceptional people will do exceptional things, but that ordinary people can live excellent lives, and that they are the best judges of what makes their own lives excellent.

This is the genius of America, and it is why this is still the place where the great things that matter happen. Great people come from everywhere, great ideas come from everywhere, but it is uniquely here where we accept them all and apply them to the lives of regular people.

2. I forgot to add that most of what Thomas Edison invented, he didn't. It is common knowledge outside USA that he stole most of what he patented. The Europeans had working Electric Lightbulbs and recorded sound years before Edison "Patented" them in USA. Most inventors do not have the money to patent and develop commercially their inventions. Today and one hundred years ago (Patents are often many times more expensive in other countries making them very hard to obtain, and only protect in small markets). Edison capitalized on this by ripping off real inventors and stealing what he couldn't gain by an unfair contract. Americans continue Edisons tradition today of riping off inventors worldwide. I should know, being an inventor myself, Adobe put two of my inventions into Photoshop CS4 as new features without paying me or crediting me. One I suggested as a GIMP open forum 2.5 years ago, and the other I suggested to the English programmer of Photogenics in 1998 which was added within a week to the Beta software, but Adobe has only just now seen fit to rip the idea off. Not to mention one of the new killer features in W7 is mine. Again, with no opportunities like the average American to seek angel investors, I had to talk about it on an American public forum where they claimed that they would protect anyones claim of being the original inventor (a false claim) and WOZ was one of the panel who turned down my original idea. Three years on and Microsoft has it built into W7 as their big laptop power saving feature without crediting me or paying me a cent. I reserve the right to pirate any software from any company that rips me of. Take me to court, I will counter sue and I will be after damages far larger than a simple piracy claim.

Sitting on far more profitable inventions for anything up to two decades, I no longer talk to any American online or in person about any of my inventions. Americans seem to be the only people that rip me off and steal my ideas.

1. The cobclusion is absolutely incorrect. As a bystander in a seperate country, the invention is the idea, and the description of the idea. Just getting the funding that other countries citizens often cannot does not make you a genius.

Not only that, but the article left out so many other English inventions... not to mention listing the thousand other inventions Americans BELIEVE that were invented in by Americans... often by people who had never set foot on US soil. Even if you did import an inventor or scientist to work and live in USA, he/she was a product of another country, the product of another culture, and the product of another countries education system.

Let me list some English inventions. You mention the DSP, ut not the RISC CPU. The English invented the RISC CPU. The English invented the Jet Engine. The Scottish were showing bikinis at fashion shows five years before an American "invented" the bikini (not tech, but possibly on of the most important inventions of the past century).

Americans did not fly first, try Richard Pearse six months before the Wright Brothers in a VERY MODERN monoplane. Not the primitive kite that the Wright Brothers flew. Don't believe me? Go to the Smithsonian and look at the Richard Pearse exibit in the back corner where even the Smithsonian has to claim "Probably the first powered flight". Speaking of a tiny country called New Zealand, try splitting the Atom, Try designing the first US rocket to get into orbit (American and German scientists could only get rockets to explode on the launch pad). Even try the Manhattan Project. If you have a good look into the real history of the Manhattan project you will find very few native American born scientists on the team because it was originally a London based team that had scientists from the British Empire (Notably New Zealand because, being the first to split the atom, New Zealand Scientists were leaders in this field).

How about Australia? Well an Australian invented the scramjet 15 years before NASA.. In fact NASA refused to check the work (Similar to the way USA refused to send an observer to NZ in the case of Richard Pearse) and then tried reinventing the scramjet to be the first to test a scramjet in the upper atmosphere (NASA still failed to be first, and their test weeks after the Australian test failed). In fact a fair amount of NASAs great tech is actually invented all around the world, but only the Americans seem to believe that Americans are great enough to invent something like the Space Shuttle.

Simply, the Americans have been subjected to a grand propaganda machine for more than a century. It is hard to know the truth when half your historical facts are fictional. It is even more amusing to watch Americans complain about the Japanese taking "American inventions" and making money off them. Often those inventions were not American to start with and Americans were taking inventions from around the world and making money off them.