I apologise for suggesting that Queen Victoria’s name led to the founding of new verbs in the English language, and I appreciate it is very unlikely that she ever had an arm wrestle with Joan of Arc. I have been lied to all these years. :oops:
I shall now go and flagellate myself with sticks and hold hot coals by way of penance.
Sorry Sandy 
(Please Dont compare me to FRIONPAN again!) :twisted:
More British Inventions (or ppl from around that area eg. United Kingdom) :
Please note the following information listed here is taken from a reliable internet source. The author is not responsible for any misguided information. Also note: It is possible that some of the items listed is a reinvention. Tho it might be a reinvention, it is a very usefull reinvention and should be noted.
[b]
Disc Brakes- Frederick William Lanchester
Cat eyes (the reflectors on the road)-Percy Shaw
Concrete (hydraulic cement)-John Smeaton
Portland Cement-Joseph Aspdin
Depth Charges-British Government
Air Pump (Diving)-John Smeaton
Succesfull self-contained breather(Diving)-William James
Closed circuit oxygen rebreather(Diving)-Henry Fleuss
Electric Motor-Michael Faraday
Electromagnet - William Sturgeon
Fax Machine - Alexander Bain
Holography - Dennis Gábor
Internal Combustion Engine - Samuel Brown
Jet Engines - Sir Frank Whittle <- DEBATABLE
Tramway Locomotive - Richard Trevithick
Lightbulbs - Humphry Davy
Penicillin - Alexander Fleming
Periscope - Sir Howard Grubb
Periodic Table - John Newlands
Radar Locating of Aircraft - Sir Robert Alexander Watson
Submarine - William Bourne
Shrapnel - Henry Shrapnel
Steam Engine - Thomas Savery
Steel Production - Sir Henry Bessemer
Television - John Logie Baird
And many, many more…[/b]
Edit-Font [b] ERROR
I apologise for suggesting that Queen Victoria’s name led to the founding of new verbs in the English language, and I appreciate it is very unlikely that she ever had an arm wrestle with Joan of Arc. I have been lied to all these years. :oops:
I shall now go and flagellate myself with sticks and hold hot coals by way of penance.
Sorry Sandy
(Please Dont compare me to FRIONPAN again!) :twisted:[/quote]
Sorry Bluffy if i was harsh. Sometimes the General has a few to many but just seems like you where saying the Brits invented everything but dirt. :lol:
No, the MP3 format was developed by Fraunhofer IIS, a German
company.
I didn’t say the British “made” the MP3 player.
Kane Kramer invented the technology behind the MP3 and founded the British Inventors Society
"Interviewed by Juliet Rix
Thursday September 30, 2004
The Guardian
You invented the MP3 player?
I came up with the idea of downloading music (and data and video) down telephone lines in 1979 when I was 23, and patented it. With James Campbell, who was 21, I developed a working prototype. We had orders worth £60m from the recording industry for our solid-state digital recorder when we lost control of the patent. There was a coup attempt within the company and we couldn’t raise enough money to pay the patent fees in time. So the patent was voided. "
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:
You mean adaptations like the “Roman” arch?
Calculus
Like the jet engine, calculus was invented at the same time independantly by a German and a Brit.
Firstly, I didn’t mention calculus.
Second, what’s your point?
You agree a Brit invented it. So a German did too. And?
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.
James Simpson, an Edinburgh physician, was the first doctor to use anaesthetics to relieve the pain of surgery in the mid 19th Century. His main objective at the beginning was to alleviate the pain that women felt in childbirth. There was strong opposition to this idea from the Church, because the Old Testament claims that God’s punishment to women for the sins of Eve was that they should bring forth children in pain. Fortunately for women everywhere, Simpson won this argument. I despise the recent trend in the USA for impressionable pregnant women to refuse any painkillers during delivery. Their fear of harming the baby with the drugs often means a longer birth and more trauma to the baby than a quick painless birth.
Antisepsis
Invented thousands of years ago in various places around the world. The ancient Norse, for example, used cow urine dried to a paste.
And you would consider that as a satisfactory antiseptic?
I wonder what your reaction would be if that was suggested during surgery.
Joseph Lister, Professor of surgery at Glasgow University, was the first to realize that the high post-operative mortality of his patients was due to the onset of bloodpoisoning (sepsis) caused by micro-organisms. Operating theatres were not the pristine places they are today. In the early 19th century, they were awash with blood and amputated body parts. In 1865 Lister found that carbolic acid was an effective antiseptic.
Portland Cement
Cement was invented by the Romans. Portland Cement is a derivative of that invention.
The arch was invented by Greeks and others.
According to you it’s development was more important.
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.
And no. Using cast iron as a building material is not a development.
It was an innovation, as you well know.
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.
Sir William Fairbairn (1789 - 1874) was born in Kelso, in southern Scotland. An engineer, he developed the idea of using tubular steel, which was much stronger than solid steel, as a construction material.
Remember all those Roman developments you keep telling us are more important than the original ideas?
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.
In October, 1855, Bessemer took out a patent for his process of rendering cast iron malleable by the introduction of air into the fluid metal to remove carbon. Bessemer’s industrial process was similar to a Chinese method to refine iron into steel, developed in the second century BCE. They called this process the “hundred refinings method” since they repeated the process 100 times.
There’s that word “patent” again.
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.
The Electric Motor (1834)
Invented by blacksmith Thomas Davenport of Vermont, USA
http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/july99/features/blacksmith/blacksmith.html
Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
British physicist and chemist, best known for his discoveries of electromagnetic induction and of the laws of electrolysis. His biggest breakthrough in electricity was his invention of the electric motor.
First Pocket Calculator
The first pocket-sized calculator, the Bowmar 901B. Bowmar/ALI Inc., Acton, Massachusetts, U.S.A
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/bowmar.html
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.
Forsyth, Alexander John , 1769–1843, Scottish inventor. He invented in 1807 the first workable percussion cap for the ignition of gunpowder in firearms. Forsyth refused an offer from Napoleon of £20,000 for the secret and was later pensioned by the British government.
Logarithms
Joost Bürgi, a Swiss clockmaker in the employ of the Duke of Hesse-Kassel, first conceived of logarithms.
“Conceived of”?
Although there is evidence that logarithms were known in 8th century India, their invention as an aid to calculation is attributed to a Scottish nobleman named John Napier (1550-1617) in his Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio (1614) and Mirifici logarithmorum canonis constructio (published posthumously in 1619). In collaboration with Oxford professor Henry Briggs, Napier refined his logarithms by constructing tables for logarithms in base 10. Napier is also credited with creating one of the earliest calculating machines (“Napier’s bones”) and with the first systematic use of the decimal point.
The Orbits of Comets
First discovered by Thales of Miletus (635 BC - 543 BC), Greek philosopher
Thales of Miletus left no writings, indeed there is doubt if he ever made any.
I’d be fascinated to know where you find so much unarguable information on the man when he left no evidence behind.Abolition of Slavery
Conceptualized 1st by followers of Second Great Awakening, a great religious revival in United States
“Conceptualised”?
Now thinking about something makes it happen?
Come on, Ironman, even you can do better than this.
Legal System Utilised by all English-speaking Nations
Some English-speaking nations used Roman Law for centuries.
And they would be which?
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.
Yes, Ironman, I really overlooked those horse-drawn vehicles, didn’t I?
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.
And by the same standard of logic, DaVinci invented the helicopter.
“The hovercraft was invented by Christopher Cockerell in 1956. The theory behind one of the most successful inventions of the 20th century, the Hovercraft, was originally tested in 1955 using an empty KiteKat cat food tin inside a coffee tin, an industrial air blower and a pair of kitchen scales. Sir Christopher Cockerell developed the first practical hovercraft designs, these led to the first hovercraft to be produced commercially, the SRN1.”
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.
“John Logie Baird is the Scottish inventor who obtained the world’s first real television picture in his laboratory in October, 1925, and demonstrated it to the British public on January 26, 1926. The image obtained was a small 30-line vertically-scanned red and black image, but it was television. Mechanical television based on Baird’s systems dominated international television for the next few years into the early 30’s”
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
“In the 1870s, two inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their respective designs to the patent office within hours of each other, Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone first. Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell entered into a famous legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won.”
There’s that word patent again.
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
See above.
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.[/quote]
And relax, dear boy, no one needs my warnings about your posts.
Concerning calculus, please don´t forget Leibnitz, he developed the same ideas at about the same time as Newton. They were even in correspondence. Newton though applied his findings on physics.
AFAIK, the common used notation for a differential dx/dy comes from Leibnitz, Newton used a dot on top of the variable to notate the differential quotient.
Jan
Actually Newton and Leibnitz didnt have much communication untill Leibnitz published his work. Many stared to give Leibnitz credit for developing a new math. This pissed Newton off something awful because he had came up with pretty much the same ideas about 7 or so years before but never published anything on it. Today most say that Newton and Leibnitz developed Calculus independently of each other.
Well, as my father (who used to do both research and teaching in Palaeontology at Freie Universität Berlin) used to say:
Publish or Perrish!
Jan
America is Leading the World’s Innovation. What American inventions do YOU use on a daily basis? …
"Okay, so it’s popular to hate America… but could you live without it? America is credited with many of the world’s most important inventions and advances affecting the quality of human life. “Down with U.S.A.”, you say… but are you willing to reject all things American?
Furthermore, it is laughable to witness the all-too-common scenario of the businessman, say from Europe or the Middle East, go into a rant on how America is the scourge of the planet and is destroying the quality of life through globalization, – WHILE standing there holding an American made notebook computer, which he uses with his American made cell phone, to connect to an American satellite, to call his company’s headquarters in America, which hired him because of his degree from an American University!
Hypocrisy at its best!
Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot – for the life of me – remember the last time I saw peasants in rickety boats, risking life and limb to come to your country. They risked it all to be in “this” country. Now, I’m not asking you to love us all days. But maybe think about us this Normandy anniversary day. Dead men do tell tales. Hear them.
Someone said I had a problem with foreigners. That’s not true. I just have a problem with lying and ungrateful ones."
http://www.usenvy.com/inventions.html
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I can’t stop laughing, my sides are hurting! It could not have been stated better.
American inventions I don’t use:
McDonald’s! I don’t want to end up a lard@ss
Guantanamo Bay! I wouldn’t want to go there either as a detainee or a detainor!
The War on Terror! I handed my uniform in and am not playing anymore.
I think the list needs further investigation.
Is the Internet invention claim based on the discredited Al Gore story?
The calculator claim ignores the inventor of the slide rule and the Frenchman who invented a mechanical calculator.
Also, most of the devices are labour-saving and environment-polluting items suitable for lard@rses and geeks! :twisted:
Look at the “brief” list below of American contributions to mankind and then begin working on excuses for your hypocrisy!:
Airplane
Air-conditioner
Alternating current generator
Audio / Magnetic recording
Bar code
Bra
Calculator
Cellular phone
Compact disc (CD-ROM)
Computer
Dishwasher
Electric motor
Email
Escalator
Ethernet (computer LAN, intranet)
Fiber optics
Flashlight
Gasoline
Internet
Kevlar
Laser
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)
Lie detector / Polygraph
Light bulb
Metal detector
Microphone
Microwave oven / Discovered microwaves
Modem
Motion picture (movie)
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
Nuclear fission / Nuclear reactor
Nylon
Oil well
Phonograph / Record player
Plastic (celloid modern day plastic)
Quartz clocks / Wrist watch
Refrigerator
Robot
Smoke detector
Soda (soft drinks)
Space Shuttle
Stapler
Tape (masking, scotch, etc.)
Teflon
Telephone
Television
Television camera
Touch-screen technology
Tupperware
Video game
Video recorder
Video tape
Vulcanized rubber / Tire
Washing machine
Xerox (photocopy)
Zipper
well,you must admit america leads inventions, great britains has lots of years of history usa was declared independence in 1776 ,so,britain had more years.it`s like comparing civilizations with 300 years and a civilization of more than 1000 years.britain had lots of time for investigations,and it had the resources necesary from the beggining.
Look at the “brief” list below of American contributions to mankind and then begin working on excuses for your hypocrisy!:
Airplane
Air-conditioner
Alternating current generator
Audio / Magnetic recording
Bar code
Bra
Calculator
Cellular phone
Compact disc (CD-ROM)
Computer
Dishwasher
Electric motor
Email
Escalator
Ethernet (computer LAN, intranet)
Fiber optics
Flashlight
Gasoline
Internet
Kevlar
Laser
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display)
Lie detector / Polygraph
Light bulb
Metal detector
Microphone
Microwave oven / Discovered microwaves
Modem
Motion picture (movie)
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
Nuclear fission / Nuclear reactor
Nylon
Oil well
Phonograph / Record player
Plastic (celloid modern day plastic)
Quartz clocks / Wrist watch
Refrigerator
Robot
Smoke detector
Soda (soft drinks)
Space Shuttle
Stapler
Tape (masking, scotch, etc.)
Teflon
Telephone
Television
Television camera
Touch-screen technology
Tupperware
Video game
Video recorder
Video tape
Vulcanized rubber / Tire
Washing machine
Xerox (photocopy)
Zipper[/quote]
Ok,
The bra was already used by ancient Roman women.
While the basic structure of the internet is American (based on the ARPA net of the late 1960s), the World Wide Web and Hypertext protocol we are using daily and which brought the internet out of the domain of the geeks, was invented by scientists of the European High Energy physics research center CERN in Switzerland and made workable by British scientists.
The refrigerator was invented by the German engineer Linde, same as the air conditioner (they use the same cooling system)
The first real plastic (not a converted natural product as celluloid is), was Bakelite, an invention of the Belgian chemist Baekeland.
The metal detector was invented by a exile Polish Army Signals Officer in Britain during WW2 and first adopted by the British.
Magnetic recording was AFAIK invented in Germany during the 1930s.
The first electronic TV camera was build in Germany in 1936 by Telefunken and used during the Olympic games, using an invention by a Russian engineer (the ikonoskope tube as a detector). Previous electro mechanical TV cameras used the Nipkov disk invented by a Russian.
The electric motor was invented by Siemens in Germany.
Even the Wright brothers agreed that they built the first motorised aircraft based on research done by e.g. the Lilienthal brothers from Germany. After the first flight, the American public lost interest in aviation very fast, so much of airplane development, to make it a practical vehicle, was done in pre WW1 France, this is the reason why so many French words are being used in aviation, e.g. nacelle, empenage, aileron etc.
The Quartz clock was AFAIK a German invention.
Gasoline (as a petroleum destillate) was already wellknown long before.
The telephone has been credited to the German Philipp Reis, Graham Bell improved it and made it practical.
Nylon (Polyamide 6,6) was an American invention, Perlon, which is also a Polyamide with almost the same properties was invented in Germany. The difference is that the Americans used raw material made from oil, while the Germans used materials made from coal.
The first movie camera was actually invented by the Lumiere brothers in France, Edison had the better PR.
Oil wells were already drilled by the Chinese almost thousand years ago, but they didn´t have real use for the liquid.
The first washing machine was invented in 1767 by a guy called Jacop Christian Schäffern. Judging by his name I assume that he was either German or Austrian.
The idea of a Robot is Czech, where actually the name comes from (Robot = worker).
I don´t know enough about the other items to make statements in here.
Jan
Wasn’t Vulcanised rubber invented bu a Scot called Dunlop?
The Abolitionist movement was active in Britain before 1776 so there is absolutely no way in Hell that it originated in the “United States”. Indeed, cynical historians have pointed out that the first serious Anti-Slavery debates in Parliament in 1771 may well have contributed to the seccessionist movement in America. The idea of an Empire-wide restriction on slave keeping or trading must have seriously worried many “enlightened” Americans of the time.
The Swedes were NOT the first people in Europe to make steel - they may heve been the first to mass-produce it but not make it.
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.
And no. Using cast iron as a building material is not a development.
It was an innovation, as you well know.
I suggest you come and have a look at Ironbridge as I have several times. There was nothing like it anywhere in the world before, if that is not the definition of an invention God knows what is.
You mean the bustier, not the Brazzier.
OK, so it was an American invention then.
The refgriderator is not the same thing as an air conditioner. Nice try though.
The first “real” plastic? :lol: Right. Sorry, it was American.
Invented by A&S Company, Santa Clara, CA
Tape recorders are an invention. :lol: It was American.
See my previous post. An American student did that first.
See my previous post. An American blacksmith invented it.
It was an American invention. Nice try.
No, it was American. The quarts oscillator is what you refer to. That’s not a clock.
Known by nobody before an American invented it. Are you thinking of kerosene perhaps?
Nope. See my previous post. The inventors are many. Nobody can take credit for it.
Right.
Bell and Howell you mean? :lol:
They did not well oil. They found it coming out of the ground. Nice try.
The First Washing Machines
The earliest manual washing machines imitated the motion of the human hand on the washboard, by using a lever to move one curved surface over another and rubbing clothes between two ribbed surfaces. This type of washer was first patented in the United States in 1846 and survived as late as 1927 in the Montgomery Ward catalogue.
It was an American invention.
He did not invent it. He only envisioned it. Nice try though.
Airplane - a major pollutant and the scourge that delivers American tourists to civilised parts of the world!
Air-conditioner - for sweaty rednecks!
Alternating current generator - American my backside! Actually the first practical AC transformer was developed by Frenchman Lucien Gaulard and Englishman John Gibbs. Also, after studying alternating current for a number of years, Charles Steinmetz (German Pole) patented a “system of distribution by alternating current” (A/C power), on January 29, 1895.
Audio / Magnetic recording The first magnetic recording device was demonstrated and patented by the Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen in 1898.
Bar code - for fat Americans at the Mall to load their shopping trolleys!
I shall continue later! :twisted:
As the United States of America was a British invention, does that mean that the British Empire should take the credit? :shock:
Yee hah! I’ve been promoted! Only 9 ranks below my ex-service rank!
Refrigerator, A/C system, without Linde´s cooling machine they would both not work.
Electric motor, while Siemens made it practical, the principle was invented by Faraday in England and the first working rotastional motor was designed in Belgium by Zenobe Gramme from Belgium.
Celluloid is a converted natural product, cellulose from wood treated with nitric acid and disolved in acetone. After evaporation of the acetone it goes back into the cellulose nitrate state.
Bakelite is a group of fully artificial compounds made of phenol and formaldehyde, using various different catalysts, either acidic or alcalic, to create special properties.
Metal detector:
http://www.answers.com/topic/polish-mine-detector?hl=mine&hl=detector
Washing machine: An American might hold the first American patent on it, but before the begin of the 19th century, there was no real patent office. This doesn´t mean somebody did not invent it before. And the fname I gave is the first reference.
Or I could patent the wheel and claim that I invented it first.
AFIAK, Roman cement was rather burned limestone (lime mortar) and no the complex mix known today.
Jan
TV camera, Zworkin, the guy who invented the Ikonoskop tube was a Russian born naturalised American. The first practical electronic TV camera was the German one built by Telefunken.
Even before, the first patent on TV was the German Paul Nipkow from 1885.
He built the first working electromechanical TV camera and a simple receiver, using his disk.
Braun from Germany invented the cathode ray tube, without which no TV set (except the modern LCD screens) would work.
And even the Weright brothers gave the sources of their research.
Following their flight the idea became forgotten in the US, else why would the US Army have to use French aircraft during WW1?
Jan
Ironman wrote :
Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot – for the life of me – remember the last time I saw peasants in rickety boats, risking life and limb to come to your country. They risked it all to be in “this” country.
Maybe if you read a little more widely you would have heard of Chinese dying in the back of lorries, trying to smuggle themselves into the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1325826.stm
Or the people trying to smuggle themselves to the UK by avoiding armed French police and negotiating razor wire to smuggle themselves on to cross-channel trains, again to the UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1897296.stm
Many "peasants in rickety boats"also risk life and limb to get to Australia.
While America is unquestionably the destination of choice for many, it is not the only “Land of Opportunity”.