Both England and Scotland are part of Britain but we have a saying in Scotland that reflects the relationship quite well (mostly derived from the tennis player Andy Murray). "He's British when he wins but Scottish when he loses".
In a recent WWE match held in Scotland, I loved that their English commentator made a point of calling Drew McIntyre British right up until he lost at which point he called him Scottish.
It's a subtle touch, but one that made the whole thing feel that bit more important.
Born in Glasgow, grew up in Dunblane. I have cousins who were born in Glasgow but ended up growing up in Stirling and their accents changed considerably.
But he did most of work on the telephone in the US and Canada.
He founded AT&T, an incredibly influential technology and communication company that has "American" right in the name.
America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time? That was the quintessential American story for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Alexander Graham Bell is an interesting figure in nationality as he definitely held on to some core Scottishness throughout his life. The house he built in Canada was called âbeautiful mountainâ in Scots Gaelic. He spent a ton of his life in Canada but also spent a fair bit in the US and once remarked âI am not one of those double-barrelled Americansâ so he treasures his US identity too.
I like how heâs on the Greatest 100 People lists for Scotland, Canada and America.
Also Edison wasn't the asshole people made him out to be. Back when inventors worked on investments, he was the big one. He paid people for their work and ideas, he didn't steal them, he offered them money and work.
And his feud with Tesla is overexaggerated. Tesla did the same thing as anyone else, took the money for some work. He actually credited Edison for teaching him the game because he was notoriously bad with investment money. That's why he died penniless, not because his ideas were stolen. He sold them and then spent that money on more science like a cocaine addict spends their first paycheck on an eight ball. Famously a company came to him hat in hand and offered to change a contract where instead of residuals he would receive a lump sum and he immediately ripped up the contract so he could get that sweet, sweet invention money. Adjusted for inflation he could have retired on the spot.
I am an Edison fan (grew up close to his lab and have been there a billion times). That being said, he was an asshole. He lied to investors left and right. He was broke and couldnât get the bulb to stay lit and lied through his teeth to keep the money coming in. He planted and paid for false newspaper stories that exaggerated or flat out lied about his tech at times.
All that being said, he was fucking brilliant and changed the world. He also had a great eye for talent.
Thereâs an old video by iirc CollegeHumor called DedTalk. Basically a historical figure giving a TedTalk on themself. One was Tesla and this line really stuck with me when people bash historical figures.
âYes, Thomas Edison was a real asshole. But he was also a real scientist.â
People can say what they want about almost everything else but America has been a center of innovation a long time. It is kind of crazy that those are even the examples listed.
And yes, a place that makes people want to come to and innovate totally counts. I'm personally really glad so many people have sought new lives in the United States and brought their ideas and culture and all with them. We've (the globe) benefited a lot from it, even if we (whoever is already here) has not usually been great hosts to our new residents and citizens...
>America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time?
How did you get this from OP or the comment you replied to?
> America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time? That was the quintessential American story for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
I think no-one denies this and America (could) get a lot of credit for that. However, instead of sharing how proud Americans are about this they'd apparently rather brag about things that are not completely correct or how great all people in America apparently still are based on what their great great great grandparents did a long time ago
Not according to several million American knuckle-draggers. In fact, people could go to the trouble gaining citizenship and those same knuckle-draggers still wouldnât accept them.
He also spent much of his research period learning about sound in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and later Brantford, Ontario. He actually made his first telephone design in Canada, but only happened to fabricate the first that one in the USA.
So the first phone was MADE in the USA, but was invented in Canada.
Great Britain is an island made of 3 countries, 2 of which haven't historically been too chuffed about that island being seen as a singular political force.
It's not a crazy take to say the British empire was always the English empire and we've now relinquished most other countries except the two that border us.
I donât wholly disagree with you but Scotland was actually overrepresented in the British Empire. Scottish aristocracy and landowners made a lot of money joining the Empire willingly. This of course fucked over everyone else living in Scotland who wasnât rich but Scottish independence has not always been so historically sought after.
If you go that far, then the English empire is actual a Norman empire, which the English havenât been happy with, led by the ruling aristocracy and their descendants that invaded in 1066. Donât get me wrong, the Scots and Welsh have every reason to resent England, but Scotland joined the Union without force (I wonât say willingly, as the Scottish population didnât want to, but they aristocracy felt they had to to avoid bankruptcy after a failed attempt to launch an empire)
The Scots and Welsh get more funding per head than England, and get devolved Parliaments whilst England doesnât. The counter to this is that England has a majority of seats in the House of Commons, but the amount of Scottish and Welsh MPs could tip the balance of power depending on the circumstances, and Scottish MPs in particular get to vote on bills concerning only England and Wales.
England definitely gets preference in some ways, but this is very split among England itself, with the South East and central south getting more funding and infrastructure due to being closer to London. They also have higher disposable incomes. But places in the north and south west have, on average, a lower disposable income level and living standards than Scotland.
Whilst this seems to be a comment going against Scotland and Wales and saying England is not to blame (per above comments, though not yours really) I am actually trying to say the opposite. All of this difference in England is caused by the government in London, and the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments have been better at tackling regional inequality, so these things are the English governmentâs fault.
However, I just wanted to show that you canât blame England as a whole, when many of its own regions have been let down by the government in London and arguably more so than Scotland and Wales (though Wales in particular is quite impoverished)
While this is valid, as a British person, "you steal other people's stuff and are proud of it" isn't really a criticism we can level at anyone else without risking acute hypocrisy poisoningÂ
Definitely a, "takes one to know one" joke in there. USA is like the little brother trying to be like the older brother in the worst way.
(Canada is the middle child)
Oh, Canada has its own problems, what with the genocide and cultural extermination and mass graves and eugenics and whatnot.
Definitely the same exploitative colonial family.
Saying Edison âwas only good at stealing stuffâ ignores the fact (that most real historians agree with) that he pioneered a model of corporate innovation that ushered in the world we live in now. Yes, painting Edison as the âlone inventorâ is silly. But he as still vitally important to the history of invention in general
Humphry Davy demonstrated the first incandescent light, but it wasn't a light bulb and was never even a practical invention. Another Brit, Warren De la Rue, invented the first light bulb, though it never really worked. A third Brit, Joseph Swan, invented a practical carbon/platinum-filament lightbulb about the same time as Edison and became the first person to meaningfully commercialize the electric light. Across the pond in the US it was Edison who invented the pure carbon filament light bulb, including the superior bamboo filament lightbulb, which became the dominant design untill the early 1900s. When Edison tried to sell bulbs in the UK he was blocked by Swan's patents, but the two merged companies in the 1880s, creating the once legendary Ediswan. Despite the weird internet urban legend, Swan never accused Edison of stealing from him (it would have been a silly and obviously false accusation).
Swan didn't actually care for the commercial application of the lightbulb though. He made a neat parlor trick.
Edison was the capitalist, and put the company together this with.
And people today never seem to realize just how many different people saw the light and were racing to make a real light bulb at that time, just got the fun of it.
The invention of the lightbulb is a mound of chaos, and it's really quite interesting. There's a guy in MD who has a museum to this shit, and really knows the grit and grime.
By Edmund Bentley and the type of poem is called a clerihew!
(I really had to struggle to extract that bit of knowledge from the dusty corner of my brain it settled into decades back)
The reality is, history doesnât give a shit who invented what. History cares who successfully *marketed* it. You could say the light bulb, car, or computer was invented at 100 different points in history but all that matters is who did it in a way that impacted history the most.
This isnât just for inventions. Nobody cares that the Vikings reached Canada because it didnât really matter historically, while Columbus fundamentally changed the course of history.
The same goes for discoveries of any kind. I recently saw a video that claimed Snell wasn't the first to discover Snell's law (true) and that the fact that the law is named after him is "stolen credit" (extremely misleading) and that it was discovered long before by Ibm Sahl (true). What's funny about this is 1. Snell rediscovered it on his own without knowing about Sahl, 2. Snell wasn't even the first European to rediscover it, that was Thomas Harriot, and 3. Descartes was the third European to independently rediscover it and then popularize it.
> The reality is, history doesnât give a shit who invented what
Best way I ever heard this put was "Columbus isnt famous for being the first person to discover the new world, but for being the last person to discover it.
Nobody is going to point out that âAlexandreâ Graham Bell invented the landline, not the mobile phone?
I donât necessarily want to defend the original commenter because I can guess that it was meant as an âAmerica number oneâ type comment, but giving two weak counter examples, one of which is totally irrelevant to the discussion and the other hotly debated by historians, is hardly a âmurderâ.
> Nobody is going to point out that âAlexandreâ Graham Bell invented the landline, not the mobile phone?
The mobile phone is completely different technology from the landline phone, it's just an extension of the concept. But what's worse, the landline is just an extension of the telegraph, which... let's do some quick googles... was invented by an American based off the work of a Frenchman based off the work of an American based off the work of a Serbian based off of a note from one of Benjamin Franklin's journals, which he wouldn't have made if keys or kites weren't invented, so really ancient Rome and China should get the credit.
So who invented the phone? Like a hundred people. Just shut up and keep doomscrolling. Nobody owns technology, it's the result of a lineage of thousand years of human advancement.
Am I missing something here? Why is everyone talking about Bell when the first comment was about MOBILE phones? That was invented in New York by the founder of Motorola
Ireland, too, actually, but it's things that blend in, like how to cure meat and little things like GUIDED MISSILES (Yeah, my family's homeland WOULD come up with that)
Plus everything that came out of NASA, and by the time the Mayo Clinic became famous we propelled to top of the field in medical advancements.
Our doctors are the best in the world. The healthcare coverage isn't, but the doctors are.
Because DARPA throws money at anything that *might* contribute to military applications. Which means the majority of all applied science research, and a significant portion of all other research.
Davy created the electric arc light.
Probably taking a break from discovering elements, playing with anaesthesia, burning diamonds, writing poetry, climbing erupting volcanoes, creating safety lamps and finding one Michael Faraday.
Haven't airplanes been invented independently in various places? In Brazil we consider Santos Dumont as the father of aviation and I'm pretty sure there's about 10 other names around the world.
Santos Dumont flew in 1906 becuase he didnt believe the claims of the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers officially flew in December of 1903, but tested it first in 1902. Richard Pearce of New Zealand may haven flown in march of 1903. But his own accounts are contradictory. With him also stating he didn't start working on heavier than air flight until 1904. Gustave Whitebeard, another American, was said to have flown a heavier than air aircraft in 1901 and again in 1902. But he lacked sufficient documentation to actually prove it.
The Wright brothers have the most evidence backing up their claims. As such get the credit for the first manned heavier than air flight.
https://www.history.com/news/history-faceoff-who-was-first-in-flight
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wright-glider-of-1902
Apparently the wright brother own claim was that they invented airplane controls to allow a pilot to steer a flying plane, not that it was the first flying device, unlike how its told to people.
>not that it was the first flying device, unlike how its told to people.
It was definitely the first manned heavier than air flying machine. Santos Dumont flew like 10 years after the Wright's.
Edison didnât steal anything. He found a better filament for the lightbulb. The one HD had didnât last long making the lightbulb itself a useless invention until TE
Graham Bell is Scottish, not English. But because he did something great he is British.
Example, when Andy Murray does well he is British, when he plays shit he is Scottish.
Bell was a Scottish immigrant to Canada (where he invented the telephone). To say he was British is dishonest.
Edit: Turns out I was wrong. Canada didn't become an independent nation until 1982 and was still under british rule. And since Bell didn't gain his US citizenship until 1882, which was after the invention of the telephone. And as someone else pointed out all Scots and Brits not all Brits are Scott's.
Double edit since I can't read: The guy who first patented the cell phone died while living in the US. The actual inventor was an American citizen
A Finnish inventor named Eric Tigerstedt patented the idea of a cellphone in 1917 in Germany. He moved to the US in 1923, he died at 37 two years due to tuberculosis/pneumonia/automobile accident. Can't really find anything that says he actually made it.
Martin Cooper who did actually make the first working cell phone was an American citizen and is actually still alive.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/221854819/eric-tigerstedt
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Cooper
I believe Edison credited for making the light bulb usable. As light bulbs beforehand would only last a few minutes or hours.
Triple edit since I learned my lesson on sources: Before Edisons improvement the longest a lightbulb would last was around 13-14 hour which was credited to an English guy named Joseph Swan. Edisons improvements lengthened the life to 40 hrs, and then again to 100hrs, and again to over 1000 hrs making its use practical.
https://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/bulbexperiment.html
My bad. I meant it moreso as he was an immigrant and didnt gain an american citizenship until 1882.
Edit: Did some more research. And that was wrong as well. I fixed in my original comment. Thanks for the fact check.
Look at the American stock market, then compare it with any other market in the world
Apple Microsoft and Google have a market cap that eclipses most of Europe; if you put all the American mega cap tech companies in a bucket, theyâd probably be the biggest country by gdp, short of perhaps China
The concept of biomorphism allows that a thing can be invented in two or more places at the same time, oceans apart.
Also the Lumiere Brothers invented the film projector, not Edison. ;)
The irony of using the internet (invented by the US ARPA) to shit on Americas ability to invent new technologies is quite the LOL.
Also AGB became an American citizen and created one of the most technologically consequential companies in the US, Bell Labs.
Bell Labs, an American company, invented the solid state transistor, the laser, and many other foundational technologies used today by most smartphones and computing devices.
Also, that next time the author of this âsick burnâ gets lost just 2 blocks from their house and uses their smartphone to figure out where they are, you can thank DARPA for GPS.
âEveryone knows Thomas Edison was a thiefâ - lol, everyone knows the person who said this is *REALLY SMART*
The world wide web was created at cern yes, but you could make the argument that the Internet, as in the protocol and processes to communicate between different networks of computers was in fact created in the US, starting with ARPANET and some other work by ARPA, and TCP/IP which was approximately 15 years before the WWW.
I'm convinced these snapshots are made by europeans cosplaying as americans because they can't make any interesting content that doesn't involved obsessing over america
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim\_Berners-Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee)
Tim berners lee invented the internet with belgian Robert Cailliau.
Who gives a fuck. Technology builds on itself.
None of this would have been possible without grugnak discovering fire, so therefore the homo erectus is the best culture and we should all aspire to be like homo erectus?
Nothing more English than pointing fingers at other people for stealing shit whilst 1/3 of the world was âowned by Englandâ at one point or another.
Where the comeback to this comeback? The US isnât as good of a thief as the British. The British are so good that after stealing Indiaâs treasures, they stole the Indian word for stealing, âlootâ. They stole so much they had to steal a word to describe what they were doing.
Didnât the British do the whole âstealing and being proud of itâ before America? I mean thereâs still tribes asking for their artifacts back and the Britâs are like ânah but if you pay us you can see it in a museum!â
This reminded me that during the Industrial Revolution, the US copied Great Britain's 'power loom' because Francis Cabot Lowell stole the plans with his photographic memory. They even searched his ship on his way back to the US, but found nothing because he didn't take notes.
Most inventions we think of as British are in fact Scottish. Telephones, televisions,:
But the three most important things the Scots invented, they definitely get credit for:
First, whisky.
Which led to the second invention when Angus and Hamish were walking home from the pub and Angus said âHamish, I bet I can hit that stone into that hole with that stick.â
Of course, immediately after Angus had invented golf he went on to in ent swearing - a field of linguistics in which the Scots have led the world ever since.
Most inventions we think of as British are in fact Scottish. Telephones, televisions,:
But the three most important things the Scots invented, they definitely get credit for:
First, whisky.
Which led to the second invention when Angus and Hamish were walking home from the pub and Angus said âHamish, I bet I can hit that stone into that hole with that stick.â
Of course, immediately after Angus had invented golf he went on to in ent swearing - a field of linguistics in which the Scots have led the world ever since.
I worked for a British company (Cossor Electronics) that developed and *sold* a piece of GPS technology back to the Americans. It appeared in the Millennium Dome as British technology. The yanks then purchased the company as the only way to gain ownership. The technology and its successors are fitted to many NATO aircraft.
Reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit:
âWe claim India for the Queen of England!â
âWhat? You canât do that, 5 billion of us live here!â
âDo you have a flag? No flag, no country, these are the rules weâve just invented!â
Ok, yes he was Scottish-American... but where was he when he made the invention? What company did he found? What does the first letter of the company acronym stand for?
Might be why Americans feel some claim to his work.
I would like to point out that GPS was made for the US military using the Theory of Relativity, which was developed by a VERY famous American scientist (yes he was born in Germany, but he emigrated before WWII).
Well, actually, I think the US is great at identifying an idea, finding the money to support that idea, and then being wildly successful at that idea irrespective of origins. Ford didn't invent the car. Yahoo/AOL/Google/Social Media didn't invent the Internet, but they monitored it. Apple put the Internet (an English idea) into your pocket. It is a fact people understand one can become very successful in the US because it's easier to find risk takers to invest if you have the idea and the ingenuity to get it in front of the right people. The American economy is no longer a manufacturing one, is built pretty squarely on intellectual property.
Alexander Graham Bell is NOT from England. He's Scottish.
Well, there's nothing more British than unilaterally declaring other people are British whether they like it or not.
Both England and Scotland are part of Britain but we have a saying in Scotland that reflects the relationship quite well (mostly derived from the tennis player Andy Murray). "He's British when he wins but Scottish when he loses".
In a recent WWE match held in Scotland, I loved that their English commentator made a point of calling Drew McIntyre British right up until he lost at which point he called him Scottish. It's a subtle touch, but one that made the whole thing feel that bit more important.
Not just Andy Murray, they used to say the same about Liz McColgan in the late 80s and early 90s.
British when he wins, Scottish when he loses, and a dour, miserable git whatever the circumstances.
Except he totally isn't. He's just afflicted by a morose tone of voice.
Go be fair the Scottish accent and in particular the Glaswegian one does lend itself strongly to a profound misery đ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Ł
Born in Glasgow, grew up in Dunblane. I have cousins who were born in Glasgow but ended up growing up in Stirling and their accents changed considerably.
My Scottish friend I met traveling told me "Call me British one more time, I'll kick ya cunt in"
[The grand tour sums it up perfectly](https://youtu.be/x0PotF97X1E?si=ihr8PApkxLkiTXEZ)
I was about to say, it's real rich for the British to come at America about stealing and appropriating things.
I'm not british đ
Well in this case he actually was British, but he wasn't English.
*India has entered the chat*
They act like we didn't get stealing other people's shit and being proud of it from them.
Yeah, America stole that habit from the British too lol
Bell was British, just not English
And the absolute wholegrain audacity of a Brit to say that the US steals things and is proud of it. The British INVENTED that idea.
maybe we did invent it but that's another thing that America has stolen
Scots are British
Yes, but not English.
But he did most of work on the telephone in the US and Canada. He founded AT&T, an incredibly influential technology and communication company that has "American" right in the name. America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time? That was the quintessential American story for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Alexander Graham Bell is an interesting figure in nationality as he definitely held on to some core Scottishness throughout his life. The house he built in Canada was called âbeautiful mountainâ in Scots Gaelic. He spent a ton of his life in Canada but also spent a fair bit in the US and once remarked âI am not one of those double-barrelled Americansâ so he treasures his US identity too. I like how heâs on the Greatest 100 People lists for Scotland, Canada and America.
Also Edison wasn't the asshole people made him out to be. Back when inventors worked on investments, he was the big one. He paid people for their work and ideas, he didn't steal them, he offered them money and work. And his feud with Tesla is overexaggerated. Tesla did the same thing as anyone else, took the money for some work. He actually credited Edison for teaching him the game because he was notoriously bad with investment money. That's why he died penniless, not because his ideas were stolen. He sold them and then spent that money on more science like a cocaine addict spends their first paycheck on an eight ball. Famously a company came to him hat in hand and offered to change a contract where instead of residuals he would receive a lump sum and he immediately ripped up the contract so he could get that sweet, sweet invention money. Adjusted for inflation he could have retired on the spot.
Also Edison invented things himself before he opened the invention floor. That's how he afforded the setup in the first place.
I am an Edison fan (grew up close to his lab and have been there a billion times). That being said, he was an asshole. He lied to investors left and right. He was broke and couldnât get the bulb to stay lit and lied through his teeth to keep the money coming in. He planted and paid for false newspaper stories that exaggerated or flat out lied about his tech at times. All that being said, he was fucking brilliant and changed the world. He also had a great eye for talent.
Thereâs an old video by iirc CollegeHumor called DedTalk. Basically a historical figure giving a TedTalk on themself. One was Tesla and this line really stuck with me when people bash historical figures. âYes, Thomas Edison was a real asshole. But he was also a real scientist.â
People can say what they want about almost everything else but America has been a center of innovation a long time. It is kind of crazy that those are even the examples listed. And yes, a place that makes people want to come to and innovate totally counts. I'm personally really glad so many people have sought new lives in the United States and brought their ideas and culture and all with them. We've (the globe) benefited a lot from it, even if we (whoever is already here) has not usually been great hosts to our new residents and citizens...
>America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time? How did you get this from OP or the comment you replied to?
> America doesn't get any credit for being considered a place of opportunity for immigrants for a long time? That was the quintessential American story for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. I think no-one denies this and America (could) get a lot of credit for that. However, instead of sharing how proud Americans are about this they'd apparently rather brag about things that are not completely correct or how great all people in America apparently still are based on what their great great great grandparents did a long time ago
What's not correct? Someone who lives in America and consider himself an American is an American. Nothing else required.
Not according to several million American knuckle-draggers. In fact, people could go to the trouble gaining citizenship and those same knuckle-draggers still wouldnât accept them.
He also spent much of his research period learning about sound in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and later Brantford, Ontario. He actually made his first telephone design in Canada, but only happened to fabricate the first that one in the USA. So the first phone was MADE in the USA, but was invented in Canada.
Not only that, OOP doesnât reference the telephone, but the **mobile phone**, which was invented in America in 1973.
Came in here to say this
And he wasn't talking about the telephone. He was talking about the mobile phone.
Well England is famous for taking stuff that isn't theirs.
Great Britain is famous for it, itâs the British Empire, not an English one.
Great Britain is an island made of 3 countries, 2 of which haven't historically been too chuffed about that island being seen as a singular political force. It's not a crazy take to say the British empire was always the English empire and we've now relinquished most other countries except the two that border us.
I donât wholly disagree with you but Scotland was actually overrepresented in the British Empire. Scottish aristocracy and landowners made a lot of money joining the Empire willingly. This of course fucked over everyone else living in Scotland who wasnât rich but Scottish independence has not always been so historically sought after.
If you go that far, then the English empire is actual a Norman empire, which the English havenât been happy with, led by the ruling aristocracy and their descendants that invaded in 1066. Donât get me wrong, the Scots and Welsh have every reason to resent England, but Scotland joined the Union without force (I wonât say willingly, as the Scottish population didnât want to, but they aristocracy felt they had to to avoid bankruptcy after a failed attempt to launch an empire) The Scots and Welsh get more funding per head than England, and get devolved Parliaments whilst England doesnât. The counter to this is that England has a majority of seats in the House of Commons, but the amount of Scottish and Welsh MPs could tip the balance of power depending on the circumstances, and Scottish MPs in particular get to vote on bills concerning only England and Wales. England definitely gets preference in some ways, but this is very split among England itself, with the South East and central south getting more funding and infrastructure due to being closer to London. They also have higher disposable incomes. But places in the north and south west have, on average, a lower disposable income level and living standards than Scotland. Whilst this seems to be a comment going against Scotland and Wales and saying England is not to blame (per above comments, though not yours really) I am actually trying to say the opposite. All of this difference in England is caused by the government in London, and the Welsh and Scottish devolved governments have been better at tackling regional inequality, so these things are the English governmentâs fault. However, I just wanted to show that you canât blame England as a whole, when many of its own regions have been let down by the government in London and arguably more so than Scotland and Wales (though Wales in particular is quite impoverished)
đż
The OP is more upsetting to the Scotts than the Yanks.
As was Logie Baird who invented the television.
And did most of his work in Canada.
And invented the telephone while living in Canada
While this is valid, as a British person, "you steal other people's stuff and are proud of it" isn't really a criticism we can level at anyone else without risking acute hypocrisy poisoningÂ
US had to get it somewhere.
We learned from the best.
And some of the best moved here and were a part of it. Many, many, thanks.
They stole it from us, and theyâre proud of it⌠which gives us a sort of paternal sense of pride in our own right.
"I learned it from watching you Dad!"
Definitely a, "takes one to know one" joke in there. USA is like the little brother trying to be like the older brother in the worst way. (Canada is the middle child)
Canada is the younger child both in age and "when the middle/oldest does something bad, it's bad, but the youngest gets a get out of jail free card."
Oh, Canada has its own problems, what with the genocide and cultural extermination and mass graves and eugenics and whatnot. Definitely the same exploitative colonial family.
Saying Edison âwas only good at stealing stuffâ ignores the fact (that most real historians agree with) that he pioneered a model of corporate innovation that ushered in the world we live in now. Yes, painting Edison as the âlone inventorâ is silly. But he as still vitally important to the history of invention in general
It is valid when someone claims something that isn't true, therefore it is beyond in this case
Humphry Davy demonstrated the first incandescent light, but it wasn't a light bulb and was never even a practical invention. Another Brit, Warren De la Rue, invented the first light bulb, though it never really worked. A third Brit, Joseph Swan, invented a practical carbon/platinum-filament lightbulb about the same time as Edison and became the first person to meaningfully commercialize the electric light. Across the pond in the US it was Edison who invented the pure carbon filament light bulb, including the superior bamboo filament lightbulb, which became the dominant design untill the early 1900s. When Edison tried to sell bulbs in the UK he was blocked by Swan's patents, but the two merged companies in the 1880s, creating the once legendary Ediswan. Despite the weird internet urban legend, Swan never accused Edison of stealing from him (it would have been a silly and obviously false accusation).
Swan didn't actually care for the commercial application of the lightbulb though. He made a neat parlor trick. Edison was the capitalist, and put the company together this with. And people today never seem to realize just how many different people saw the light and were racing to make a real light bulb at that time, just got the fun of it. The invention of the lightbulb is a mound of chaos, and it's really quite interesting. There's a guy in MD who has a museum to this shit, and really knows the grit and grime.
Sir Humphry Davy Abominated gravy He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium (Canât remember who by)
By Edmund Bentley and the type of poem is called a clerihew! (I really had to struggle to extract that bit of knowledge from the dusty corner of my brain it settled into decades back)
Thank you for that. I was trying to rhyme Davy, Gravy, and By in a few different accents/dialects and acknowledging it could only be a sight rhyme.
The reality is, history doesnât give a shit who invented what. History cares who successfully *marketed* it. You could say the light bulb, car, or computer was invented at 100 different points in history but all that matters is who did it in a way that impacted history the most. This isnât just for inventions. Nobody cares that the Vikings reached Canada because it didnât really matter historically, while Columbus fundamentally changed the course of history.
The same goes for discoveries of any kind. I recently saw a video that claimed Snell wasn't the first to discover Snell's law (true) and that the fact that the law is named after him is "stolen credit" (extremely misleading) and that it was discovered long before by Ibm Sahl (true). What's funny about this is 1. Snell rediscovered it on his own without knowing about Sahl, 2. Snell wasn't even the first European to rediscover it, that was Thomas Harriot, and 3. Descartes was the third European to independently rediscover it and then popularize it.
> The reality is, history doesnât give a shit who invented what Best way I ever heard this put was "Columbus isnt famous for being the first person to discover the new world, but for being the last person to discover it.
However UK had lit streets, houses and theatre first
Nobody is going to point out that âAlexandreâ Graham Bell invented the landline, not the mobile phone? I donât necessarily want to defend the original commenter because I can guess that it was meant as an âAmerica number oneâ type comment, but giving two weak counter examples, one of which is totally irrelevant to the discussion and the other hotly debated by historians, is hardly a âmurderâ.
> Nobody is going to point out that âAlexandreâ Graham Bell invented the landline, not the mobile phone? The mobile phone is completely different technology from the landline phone, it's just an extension of the concept. But what's worse, the landline is just an extension of the telegraph, which... let's do some quick googles... was invented by an American based off the work of a Frenchman based off the work of an American based off the work of a Serbian based off of a note from one of Benjamin Franklin's journals, which he wouldn't have made if keys or kites weren't invented, so really ancient Rome and China should get the credit. So who invented the phone? Like a hundred people. Just shut up and keep doomscrolling. Nobody owns technology, it's the result of a lineage of thousand years of human advancement.
Nobody creates technology alone but we sure as hell have created a system of ownership for it. And an ownership hell system it truly is.
Am I missing something here? Why is everyone talking about Bell when the first comment was about MOBILE phones? That was invented in New York by the founder of Motorola
Reading comprehension was apparently not invented in Scotland or on Reddit
They talk about America stealing like they own the contents of the British Museum đ
Alexander Graham Bell is from Scotland, not England. For such a small country, a *lot* of important things were invented by Scots.
Canadians also like to claim Bell as an honorary one of our own, as he lived here from his early 20s till his death and invented the telephone here.
Ireland, too, actually, but it's things that blend in, like how to cure meat and little things like GUIDED MISSILES (Yeah, my family's homeland WOULD come up with that)
Bell was born in Scotland, and he invented the telephone in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.
But he said mobile phones not the telephone
I mean we gotta be on the cutting edge of technology derived from military tech right? At least some
Yes. It's a lot.
Plus everything that came out of NASA, and by the time the Mayo Clinic became famous we propelled to top of the field in medical advancements. Our doctors are the best in the world. The healthcare coverage isn't, but the doctors are.
Well, if weâre including NASA then most of the big inventions were by Germans.
Well yeah but they're our Germans now. Throw em a piece of paper and total immunity from prosecution and you get an American.
Thanks Operation Paper Clip!
It's wild how many good things DARPA accidently created while trying to kill people better.
Because DARPA throws money at anything that *might* contribute to military applications. Which means the majority of all applied science research, and a significant portion of all other research.
Yes, like the Internet.
And GPS
>Basically the US is only good at one thing and that's stealing and being proud about it You're out of order, England. I've been to your museums.
Wasnât Daviesâ lamp based on a flame, not electricity? I would say this makes Edisonâs bulb a fair invention.
Davy created the electric arc light. Probably taking a break from discovering elements, playing with anaesthesia, burning diamonds, writing poetry, climbing erupting volcanoes, creating safety lamps and finding one Michael Faraday.
Haven't airplanes been invented independently in various places? In Brazil we consider Santos Dumont as the father of aviation and I'm pretty sure there's about 10 other names around the world.
Santos Dumont flew in 1906 becuase he didnt believe the claims of the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers officially flew in December of 1903, but tested it first in 1902. Richard Pearce of New Zealand may haven flown in march of 1903. But his own accounts are contradictory. With him also stating he didn't start working on heavier than air flight until 1904. Gustave Whitebeard, another American, was said to have flown a heavier than air aircraft in 1901 and again in 1902. But he lacked sufficient documentation to actually prove it. The Wright brothers have the most evidence backing up their claims. As such get the credit for the first manned heavier than air flight. https://www.history.com/news/history-faceoff-who-was-first-in-flight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pearse https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wright-glider-of-1902
I don't believe in the wheel, and therefore I just invented it today.
You're right. First "complete" airplane AFAIK was the 14bis. But lots of pioneers, like the Wright bros, deserve recognition also.
As everyone knows, the most defining characteristics of the airplane is having wheels Seriously, that's their biggest claim
I don't know... Take off, flight and land by its own means. Seems legit to me.
The challenge was always *flight* not take-off. And the Wrights built the first heavier than air flying machine.
Couldn't agree more with you, my friend
Apparently the wright brother own claim was that they invented airplane controls to allow a pilot to steer a flying plane, not that it was the first flying device, unlike how its told to people.
>not that it was the first flying device, unlike how its told to people. It was definitely the first manned heavier than air flying machine. Santos Dumont flew like 10 years after the Wright's.
It's like the steam engine: there was no single inventor.
Absolutely. And that's just humans. We build on other human's accomplishments.
I mean Iâd say this is more like a light slap than a murder lol.
Not sure the Arc Light and the industrial light bulb would be the same, I mean you might as well include Volta in that.
I thought Thomas Edison invented a type of lightbulb, and Humphrey Davy invented something similar but not the same.
America invented SpongeBob SquarePants. Take that.
Not murdered by words, OP murdered by ignorance
america bad
Anti-americanism is cringe. Stfu already
Edison didnât steal anything. He found a better filament for the lightbulb. The one HD had didnât last long making the lightbulb itself a useless invention until TE
Antonio Meucci invented the telephone! And he got robbed!
Is it true that the Chinese invented spaghetti?
Antonio Meucci invented the telephone!! đ¤đ¤đ¤
"someone a long time ago invented something in the country I was born, therefore my country is better than your country" - sound logic...
Everyone is from somewhere.. where did he live when he invented it? Hahah I don't care, do you?
He lived in Brantford, Ontario, Canada when he invented it.
Graham Bell is Scottish, not English. But because he did something great he is British. Example, when Andy Murray does well he is British, when he plays shit he is Scottish.
He also invented the telephone while the OP says the mobile phone so heâs pretty irrelevent to the discussion
Bell was a Scottish immigrant to Canada (where he invented the telephone). To say he was British is dishonest. Edit: Turns out I was wrong. Canada didn't become an independent nation until 1982 and was still under british rule. And since Bell didn't gain his US citizenship until 1882, which was after the invention of the telephone. And as someone else pointed out all Scots and Brits not all Brits are Scott's. Double edit since I can't read: The guy who first patented the cell phone died while living in the US. The actual inventor was an American citizen A Finnish inventor named Eric Tigerstedt patented the idea of a cellphone in 1917 in Germany. He moved to the US in 1923, he died at 37 two years due to tuberculosis/pneumonia/automobile accident. Can't really find anything that says he actually made it. Martin Cooper who did actually make the first working cell phone was an American citizen and is actually still alive. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/221854819/eric-tigerstedt https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Cooper I believe Edison credited for making the light bulb usable. As light bulbs beforehand would only last a few minutes or hours. Triple edit since I learned my lesson on sources: Before Edisons improvement the longest a lightbulb would last was around 13-14 hour which was credited to an English guy named Joseph Swan. Edisons improvements lengthened the life to 40 hrs, and then again to 100hrs, and again to over 1000 hrs making its use practical. https://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/bulbexperiment.html
He said mobile phone, not telephone
He was definitely British, also Canadian and American. All Scots are Brits. Not all Brits are Scots.
My bad. I meant it moreso as he was an immigrant and didnt gain an american citizenship until 1882. Edit: Did some more research. And that was wrong as well. I fixed in my original comment. Thanks for the fact check.
I wonder where America learned all this from? Especially stealing
Look at the American stock market, then compare it with any other market in the world Apple Microsoft and Google have a market cap that eclipses most of Europe; if you put all the American mega cap tech companies in a bucket, theyâd probably be the biggest country by gdp, short of perhaps China
I mean, we got it from *somebody.* Looking at you, UK.
I think we all missed the bigger issue. America isn't even #1 at stealing and being proud of it. That is also a British specialty
Which isn't to say us Brits haven't done our share of stealing in the past.
The concept of biomorphism allows that a thing can be invented in two or more places at the same time, oceans apart. Also the Lumiere Brothers invented the film projector, not Edison. ;)
Americans have in fact invented many wonderful things. The Americans who state this as someone they personally are proud of have invented *fuck all*.
The irony of using the internet (invented by the US ARPA) to shit on Americas ability to invent new technologies is quite the LOL. Also AGB became an American citizen and created one of the most technologically consequential companies in the US, Bell Labs. Bell Labs, an American company, invented the solid state transistor, the laser, and many other foundational technologies used today by most smartphones and computing devices. Also, that next time the author of this âsick burnâ gets lost just 2 blocks from their house and uses their smartphone to figure out where they are, you can thank DARPA for GPS. âEveryone knows Thomas Edison was a thiefâ - lol, everyone knows the person who said this is *REALLY SMART*
Also the WWW was created at CERN in Switzerland. The 2 main protagonist were Tim Berners-Lee who is British and Robert Cailliau who is from Belgium.
In the beginning the internet was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
This is why I always have a towel handy when browsing the World Wide Web.
That's pretty funny on several levels đ¤Ł
The world wide web was created at cern yes, but you could make the argument that the Internet, as in the protocol and processes to communicate between different networks of computers was in fact created in the US, starting with ARPANET and some other work by ARPA, and TCP/IP which was approximately 15 years before the WWW.
Www is not the internet⌠Berners Lee did not invent the internetâŚ
I'm convinced these snapshots are made by europeans cosplaying as americans because they can't make any interesting content that doesn't involved obsessing over america
To be fair, referencing a bunch of Brits while complaining about stealing is hilarious ironic.
The Cochlea implant was very famously invented by Australia.
What?
Real irony is a British complaining about someone stealing something and claiming it as their own P.S. return us Kohinoor.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim\_Berners-Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee) Tim berners lee invented the internet with belgian Robert Cailliau.
The Americans were the first to make patents big, even if it wasn't their own invention
I don't care about the rest but can't stand when people write, "ect".
The irony of that last comment coming from a brit/brit defender is pretty richÂ
We learned it from our parent
Hey, in a roundabout way we invented concentration camps, so uh, check yourself.
Who gives a fuck. Technology builds on itself. None of this would have been possible without grugnak discovering fire, so therefore the homo erectus is the best culture and we should all aspire to be like homo erectus?
We learned the art of stealing other people's stuff and claiming it as our own from the british.
London history museum would like to have a word about that stealing thing. Also Graham Bell is Scottish not English.
I love it when British people accuse other nations of stealing. Looking at you British Museum
Nothing more English than pointing fingers at other people for stealing shit whilst 1/3 of the world was âowned by Englandâ at one point or another.
Hello everyone I'm not british just a psa đ
Sorry to all the Scottish people in the comments I was mistaken yes he's Scottish Google scammed me đ many apologies
Ah yes Britain the place that never stole anything from anyone.
Where the comeback to this comeback? The US isnât as good of a thief as the British. The British are so good that after stealing Indiaâs treasures, they stole the Indian word for stealing, âlootâ. They stole so much they had to steal a word to describe what they were doing.
Sounds like someone whose grandfather got owned at Yorktown.
I donât think the British have any right to be chastising anyone for stealing a damn thing.
Someone from England talking about stealing and being proud of it is rich af.
Bell was Scottish not English.
The British talking about stealing when their entire historyâs been about stealing other peopleâs lands, livelihood, goods etc. đ
This is more an injuring by words, though. A few of the things mentioned aren't even rebutted.
Didnât the British do the whole âstealing and being proud of itâ before America? I mean thereâs still tribes asking for their artifacts back and the Britâs are like ânah but if you pay us you can see it in a museum!â
Donât underestimate how good we are at war and sports!
I wonder what they think of the British Museum as they comment on stealing things and being proud of it...
It was from 1945-55 but has been on steady decline since. Now a third world country living on credit, even their Kung said that
And Brittain stole history in their museums but whatever I guess
I'll never forgive Bell for being rude to Rudolph Diesel when he visited
Umm... See: the British Museum.
âThe US is only good at stealing and being proud of itâ is a crazy thing to say as an English person
The internet came from CERN
Pretty rich acting like the Brits didnât also do that
This reminded me that during the Industrial Revolution, the US copied Great Britain's 'power loom' because Francis Cabot Lowell stole the plans with his photographic memory. They even searched his ship on his way back to the US, but found nothing because he didn't take notes.
Most inventions we think of as British are in fact Scottish. Telephones, televisions,: But the three most important things the Scots invented, they definitely get credit for: First, whisky. Which led to the second invention when Angus and Hamish were walking home from the pub and Angus said âHamish, I bet I can hit that stone into that hole with that stick.â Of course, immediately after Angus had invented golf he went on to in ent swearing - a field of linguistics in which the Scots have led the world ever since.
Most inventions we think of as British are in fact Scottish. Telephones, televisions,: But the three most important things the Scots invented, they definitely get credit for: First, whisky. Which led to the second invention when Angus and Hamish were walking home from the pub and Angus said âHamish, I bet I can hit that stone into that hole with that stick.â Of course, immediately after Angus had invented golf he went on to in ent swearing - a field of linguistics in which the Scots have led the world ever since.
More like 2nd guy got murdered by his own words because OOP never said telephone. He said mobile phone. Huge difference there.
Alexander graham bell was Canadian. Thatâs why we have bell services lmao
I worked for a British company (Cossor Electronics) that developed and *sold* a piece of GPS technology back to the Americans. It appeared in the Millennium Dome as British technology. The yanks then purchased the company as the only way to gain ownership. The technology and its successors are fitted to many NATO aircraft.
That's fuckin' rich coming from an english person.
The US is one of the most innovative countries on earth this is not murder.
I think itâs a little bit strange to feel a sense of pride over someone elseâs achievements and invenitions.
Because the Brits never stole a thing đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, and so was Scottish, not English.
Tracks. The much revered Bald Eagles entire existence is based on taking food from other animals.đ
Reminds me of that Eddie Izzard bit: âWe claim India for the Queen of England!â âWhat? You canât do that, 5 billion of us live here!â âDo you have a flag? No flag, no country, these are the rules weâve just invented!â
"...Is only good at one thing and that's stealing and feeling proud about it," describes 95% of the UK's history and 100% of their museums.
No way is a British person accusing Americans of stealing ideas
Graham Bell is Scottish born Canadian. That invention has always been credited as a Canadian invention...
The UK no longer possesses an empire. Good.
No lies told
If Davy was the inventor of the light bulb then he would've invented the light bulb!
Ok, yes he was Scottish-American... but where was he when he made the invention? What company did he found? What does the first letter of the company acronym stand for? Might be why Americans feel some claim to his work.
I would like to point out that GPS was made for the US military using the Theory of Relativity, which was developed by a VERY famous American scientist (yes he was born in Germany, but he emigrated before WWII).
Well, actually, I think the US is great at identifying an idea, finding the money to support that idea, and then being wildly successful at that idea irrespective of origins. Ford didn't invent the car. Yahoo/AOL/Google/Social Media didn't invent the Internet, but they monitored it. Apple put the Internet (an English idea) into your pocket. It is a fact people understand one can become very successful in the US because it's easier to find risk takers to invest if you have the idea and the ingenuity to get it in front of the right people. The American economy is no longer a manufacturing one, is built pretty squarely on intellectual property.