I’m sorry, but this thread was just too much fun to let die out.
Let’s leave aside the fact that many of the Roman’s inventions were developments rather than innovations. This is true of so many inventions it would be foolish to only consider it true of the Romans.
Let’s leave aside the fact that many Roman inventions and developments were lost after the collapse of their Empire.
Let us instead look at a few of the meagre offerings the British made to the world, none of which, according to Ironman, were world changing.
Surgical anaesthesia, surgical antisepsis, penicillin, vaccination, cloning, Portland cement, iron as a building material, tubular steel, the Bessemer converter for steel production, the reflector telescope, food canning, refrigeration, the thermos flask, the electric motor, the electromagnet, the pocket calculator, the breech-loading rifle, fulminate ignition/the percussion cap, shrapnel, the first Regular Army unit issued with a rifled weapon, the tank, radar, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, logarithms, nature of the orbits of comets, Keynesian economics, Parliamentary Democracy, abolition of slavery, systemised trial by jury, legal system utilised by all English-speaking nations, steam locomotive, the railway, the pneumatic tyre, the marine screw propeller, the (patented) turbo-jet engine, the hovercraft, television, the telephone, the MP3 player, the World Wide Web.
Oh, and the world’s most influential language.
(Ironman; nice to see from your new signature that you acknowledge that America is an Imperial power :))
Not forgetting Differential Calculus and both the programmable and non-programmable computer. Both of these (calculus particularly) have far more earth shattering consequences than most of the items on your list.
Not forgetting Differential Calculus and both the programmable and non-programmable computer. Both of these (calculus particularly) have far more earth shattering consequences than most of the items on your list.[/quote]
I would in no way suggest the list I posted is complete, or even that it contains the most influential British ideas, inventions or discoveries.
That would depend on subjective opinion.
Merely that it shows that Britain and her Empire made some contributions, beyond that of the English language, which could well be described as world changing.
I even left out Scotch whisky and Viagra
Not only the first marine screw propellor but the first IRONCLAD ship.
Worlds first efficient metropolitan sewerage system.
The first “MODERN” suspension bridge (not burma bridge)
The Wheel has just been invented by my friend in Yeovil
Cider - more exactly “scrumpy”
First military use of the longbow.
First use of Khaki. (possibly - depends on your dulux colour chart)
Etiquette, class and manners.
Northerners
Hovis
Cricket (not man-rounders) baseball
Rugby (contact sport with skill)
Association football (played with the foot)
Shakespearian Sonnets.
The naval chronometer!
GMT.
Consitutional Monarchs.
Diplomacy as an Alternative to war!
Land Rovers.
Television.
Light bulbs
The Infantry Square.
Victory
Brown Bess
Long Tom
Military Cannonade.
the Assult spade!
Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde -and with them acidic whit and verbosity.
some of these might be repeats some of them might be invented elsewhere.
but
if in my opinion i use the word …(British)… to mean these things tehn surely that is what it is, if it is fitting for the word to be used in that place and the name fits then why should it not be called an …(british)…
and after all of that, The British invented the British Empire, that spawned… IRONMAN… How can I not be proud :lol:
I’ve got a feeling the Spartans may have beaten you to that (they’re actually a bunch I have rather a lot of sympathy for… at least in their earlier incarnation)…
I also claimed we invented “victory” but no-one has argued that yet!
To quote Al murray ‘and which defeated nation do you hail from sir?’
And of course Blackadder
‘When i joined the army the prerequiste of a British campaign were that on no account were the enemy to have guns, even spears made us think twice. No, the sort of people we liked to fight were three foot tall and armed with sharp pieces of fruit.’
talking about invention, a 2000 years old sword in china has found to have the same anti-rust technology to 1937 german and the 1955 american, those sword are reported as still useable.
I would have thought that one was clearly unarguable - it’s been parked in dry dock in Portsmouth for the last 80 years or so, and is the oldest commissioned warship on earth…
I would have thought that one was clearly unarguable - it’s been parked in dry dock in Portsmouth for the last 80 years or so, and is the oldest commissioned warship on earth…[/quote]
I was aware of that., However we “built” THE VICTORY and did not “invent” it. My rather jingoistic attitude was suggesting, there was not such thing as “victory” Prior to the Brits, only winning, which personally I htink sounds a bit NAFF.
Victory is derived from the English word Victoria, the name of the Queen that ruled over the entire world and is rumoured to have beaten Joan of Arc in an arm wrestling match in 1902 at the Gillbert and Sullivan summer soiree
If I was being a pedant, I would argue you have to invent something before you can build it
And there was me thinking Victory was derived from the Latin Vici, derived from the word Conquer (can’t remember latin verb endings, absolutely hated the things at school, so won’t try and put the proper one in). Then again, being as JC was referring to us despite having really been little more than a tourist you may just have a point…
Bluffcove … comon you almost getting like IRONMAN on your claims. I can despute most of the things you claim the British Emipire was responsible for. Do you want to be viewed as the British version of IRONMAN…coz that is where you are headed. I am well educated and mostly self educated…real education(if you need my background I will produce it). I will be a doctor someday…I do not doubt it. And not a medical doctor. Your a good guy but quit blowing smoke aka bullshit. But I will commend you that you do admit when you are wrong. Not easy sometimes. I know. But thats how it is. Lets keep things good. I have a bunch of guys who i have to look towards the future of this site. Future leaders. Future mod. In the near future I “may” not be here. And it will be you guys I look to for leadership. I suggest you show yourselves.
No, the MP3 format was developed by Fraunhofer IIS, a German company.
Not forgetting Differential Calculus and both the programmable and non-programmable computer. Both of these (calculus
particularly) have far more earth shattering consequences than most of the items on your list.[/quote]
Reiver, you have mistakenly claimed that many things are British inventions which are not. 24 of the 46 things you claim are British inventions are not British Inventions at all. That means over 50% of what you said is untrue! Man, that’s a LOT of falicy right there. A couple of them are not inventions at all, but adaptations of someone else’s invention. Here are those many things that you claimed to be British inventions, but are not:
Calculus
Like the jet engine, calculus was invented at the same time independantly by a German and a Brit.
Anesthesia
"The first herbal anaesthesia was administered in prehistory. Opium and hemp were two of the most important herbs used.
They were ingested or burned and the smoke inhaled. Alcohol was also used, its vasodilatory properties being unknown. In China, Taoist medical practitioners developed anaesthesia by means of acupuncture. In South America preparations from datura, effectively scopolamine, were used as was coca. In Medieval Europe various preparations of mandrake were tried as was henbane (hyoscyamine)." - Wikipedia
Ancient man used anesthisia for surgury in several places around the world. What Henry Hill Hickman did was make a gas to be used as anesthisia. He came thousands of years too late to invent it for surgical use.
Antisepsis
Invented thousands of years ago in various places around the world. The ancient Norse, for example, used cow urine dried to a paste.
Portland Cement
Cement was invented by the Romans. Portland Cement is a derivative of that invention.
Iron as a Building Material
For crying out loud. That’s not an invention. How about iron as a sword, or as a cauldron, or a tool. Inventions? Hardly. Those are adaptations. You claim a number of things are British inventions when they are only adaptations here.
Tubular Steel
For crying out loud. That’s not an invention. It’s an adaptation. Didn’t the US company US Steel do that first anyway? There are other adaptations I am not even mentioning that you claim are inventions.
Bessemer Converter
This is an adaptation of the Swedish invention of the Blast Furnace, which made the Swedes the 1st people in Europe to make steel.
Canning of Food
French confectioner Nicholas Appert developed a method of vacuum-sealing food inside glass jars. However, glass containers were unsuitable for transportation, and soon they had been replaced with cylindrical tin or steel cans (tin-openers were not to be invented for another thirty years - at first, soldiers either had to cut the cans open with bayonets or smash them open with rocks to get the food out!). The French Army began experimenting with issuing tinned foods to its soldiers, but the slow process of tinning foods and the even slower development stage, along with the difficulties of loading wooden wagons with tons of metal canisters, prevented the army from shipping large amounts around the Empire, and the war ended before the process could be perfected. A Brit adapted the process to larger containers and mass production.
Refrigeration
Oliver Evans (US) designed a refrigeration machine which ran on vapour in 1805. He is often called the inventor of the refrigerator.
Fulminate Ignition
The Needle Gun, rifle named for its inventor, Nikolaus von Dreyse (Germany). It had a long, sharp firing pin designed to pierce the charge of propelling powder and strike the detonating material (usually mercury fulminate) located at the base of the bullet. The Dreyse rifle, invented between 1827 and 1829, was adopted by the Russian Army in 1848.
Logarithms
Joost Bürgi, a Swiss clockmaker in the employ of the Duke of Hesse-Kassel, first conceived of logarithms.
The Orbits of Comets
First discovered by Thales of Miletus (635 BC - 543 BC), Greek philosopher
Abolition of Slavery
Conceptualized 1st by followers of Second Great Awakening, a great religious revival in United States
Legal System Utilised by all English-speaking Nations
Some English-speaking nations used Roman Law for centuries.
Railway
The first horse tracked vehicles, drawn wagonways appeared in Greece, Malta, and parts of the Roman Empire at least 2000 years ago using cut-stone tracks. They began reappearing in Europe, from around 1550, usually operating with crude wooden tracks. In the late 18th century iron rails began to appear.
Hovercraft
The first recorded design for a vehicle which could be termed a Hovercraft was in 1716 by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish designer, philosopher and theologian.
Television
The German student Paul Gottlieb Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1885. Nipkow’s spinning disk design is credited with being the first television image rasterizer.
A fully electronic system was first demonstrated by Philo Taylor Farnsworth in the autumn of 1927. Farnsworth, a Mormon farm
boy from Rigby, Idaho, first envisioned his system at age 14. He discussed the idea with his high school chemistry teacher, who
could think of no reason why it would not work (Farnsworth would later credit this teacher, Justin Tolman, as providing key insights into his invention). He continued to pursue the idea at Brigham Young Academy (now Brigham Young University). At age 21, he demonstrated a working system at his own laboratory in San Francisco. His breakthrough freed television from reliance on spinning discs and other mechanical parts. All modern picture tube televisions descend directly from his design.
Telephone
The very early history of the telephone is a confusing morass of claim and counterclaim, which was not clarified by the huge mass of lawsuits which hoped to resolve the patent claims of individuals. There was a lot of money involved, particularly in the Bell Telephone companies, and the aggressive defense of the Bell patents resulted in much confusion.
“Alexander Graham Bell is commonly, but incorrectly (see the discussion above), credited as the first inventor of the telephone.” - Wikipedia
MP3 Format
Developed by Fraunhofer IIS, a German company.
First MP3 Player
“The world’s first mass-produced hardware MP3 player was Saehan’s MPMan, sold in Asia starting in the late spring of 1998. It was released in the United States as the Eiger Labs MPMan F10/F20 (two variants of the same device) in the summer of 1998.” http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450-5622055-1.html
World Wide Web
Co-invented by a Brit and Belgian Robert Cailliau
Come on leiver, don’t peddle bullcrap, again. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my advice is not to place much stock in the things reiver says. With a track record for spouting so much falicy, he can hardly be trusted.
