A perfect example of american Creativity

[Jccarlton]

no way - Lilenfield's

The FET. And it was undeveloped. Until Americans invented the bipolar transistor. Then they figured out the FET and tried to patent it. No dice. Prior art.

And Lilenfield was living in the US at the time. Frankly it doesn't matter where things are invented for the first time. In most of those cases the invention doesn't work because of something that is unavailable. George Cayley couldn't make a real airplane because there was no engine to power it and he had no clue as to how to control the machine. The Wright Brothers had the engine technology available and faced and conquered the control problem and the air. Bell and the people at the Bell Telephone not only put voice on wire, but built a system to route calls and kept working on improving the clarity of the voice transmissions. I happened to buy Bell labs technical history of telephone's early development. To get to the phone system that many of us are old enough to still remember took a constant aggressive engineering development, never being satisfied with the results.

[MSimon]

And don't forget the use of SSB for multiplexing signals on wire and the widespread use of digital communications with the advent of T1 technology.

[Jccarlton]

And don't forget the use of SSB for multiplexing signals on wire and the widespread use of digital communications with the advent of T1 technology.

That's in the book I don't have, yet. Since it's at least 4 volumes that show up on the book exchange, it's going to be expensive.

[seedload]

Name an invention by an American that wasn't an innovation of something that hadn't already been invented.

Here are some that I am SURE you can't take credit for:

• Dental Floss
  Tooth Paste
  Fluoride Tooth Paste

[CaptainBeowulf]

Name an invention by ANYONE that wasn't an innovation of something that had already been invented.

Guys, seriously - my impression is that a number of the posts at the beginning of this thread were tongue-in-cheek, but it seems to be getting taken a bit too seriously. Seedload's comment above is almost true.

The ancient Romans, Greeks and Chinese had invented more primitive versions of most of the stuff we have today. Giant domes made out of concrete? Check. "Central air" powered by tubes tunneled underground to bring cold air up in summer, or heat from hot springs in winter? Check. Roads built using a number of different layers of aggregate and paved with interlocking stones? Check. Primitive ball bearings and calculating machines for predicting star movements? Check.

Modernity came up with steam and then internal combustion engines, electricity, applied gunpowder to projectile weapons and explosives, and developed nuclear power. Almost everything else had some "previous" version. (OK, the above two sentences are four sweeping generalizations merged into one overall generalization, but if you take it with a grain of salt, you should get the drift.)

Heck, you could say that Watt couldn't have invented a steam engine unless other people hadn't already invented pulleys, levers, ball bearings, iron casting, learned how to mine/make/burn coal, etc. In the 3000 odd years that we've been a "civilization" (ie. able to make written records of what we do and pass on that knowledge to the next generation) we build technological knowledge on the basis of what our predecessors did. Realistically, all successful countries in the last century are both innovators and copycats.

Sure, taunt each other over whether America/UK/whoever else are really innovators or "just" really good copycats - but it's just a game.

I can't find it online, but there's this article: "In the wake of the wheel." In Human problems in technological change; a casebook,. Edward H. Spicer ed. New York, Russell Sage. As far as I remember, the basic point of the article is that American Indian agents introduced wheeled carts to a tribe in the southwest sometime in the 1890s or early 1900s. The tribe's technological patterns then began to change. They started to lose their skills at making saddlebags to transport goods long distances; instead cart repair became a valuable new skill. And so on. All kinds of subsequent "inventions" were made that may have been made thousands of times elsewhere, but they were made again amongst this group of people because of a wheeled cart. That's how technology works. One innovation spawns a potentially unlimited number of other new innovations. Who's the original inventor? You can keep going forever, tracing an invention back to previous inventions without which that invention wouldn't have been possible.

[MSimon]

CaptainBeowulf,

It beats arguing politics.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Lol you are right there

[Josh Cryer]

CaptainBeowulf,

It beats arguing politics.

[Brian H]

Informative Failures are necessary. For example, the first guy to invent the wheel gave up on it, because he made it 4-sided and the corners kept wearing off, severely reducing traction!