What did your country discover/invent?

Originally posted by SanPellegrino
It seems the TV and even the bike are claimed by different nations. my 2 cents: the first bike (but without pedals) was invented by Freiherr von Drais and the first real TV by someone ? Braun "Braunsche Röhre", both Germany
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Surely Baird invented the television.
 
Originally posted by SanPellegrino
It seems the TV and even the bike are claimed by different nations. my 2 cents: the first bike (but without pedals) was invented by Freiherr von Drais and the first real TV by someone ? Braun "Braunsche Röhre", both Germany
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Germany gave us the first real jet fighters, ejection seats and ballistic missiles!

Maximal respect!
 
Originally posted by CurtSibling


Germany gave us the first real jet fighters, ejection seats and ballistic missiles!

Maximal respect!
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Well they didn't invent the concentration camps. The British did that. So how could you respect the Germans without respecting the British?

(I entirely disagree with the concept of concentration camps)
 
Originally posted by phoenix_night

Surely Baird invented the television.
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We must distinguish between the mechanical and electronic versions. Baird invented the first, and for the second I think it's Philo Farnsworth.
 
"Who is the inventor of television? You have really opened up a can of worms with that question! Probably no other invention in history has been so hotly disputed as the prestigious claim to the invention of 'Tele-vision or 'long-distance sight' by wireless.” " :lol:


Who is the inventor of television?


and the bike question has maybe an unsuspected winner: Italy, Leonardo da Vinci!
 
Originally posted by Dr. Dr. Doktor


Well they didn't invent the concentration camps. The British did that. So how could you respect the Germans without respecting the British?
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The British invented modern concentration camps. The Germans, however, perfected them.

The earliest concentration camps known to us were, depending on your defenition of "concentration camp", invented by either the Assyrians or the Seleucids.

As for what my country invented, well, let's just say that there are Universities in the United States that have made more contributions to the world than have some entire continents.
 
Originally posted by SanPellegrino
"Who is the inventor of television? You have really opened up a can of worms with that question! Probably no other invention in history has been so hotly disputed as the prestigious claim to the invention of 'Tele-vision or 'long-distance sight' by wireless.” " :lol:
Who is the inventor of television?
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I wasn't quite sure, as I only saw one documentary on Discovery about it. So it seems that Philo Farnsworth does deserve to be the inventor of that gizmo from Hell...
 
Canada discovered how to make insulin not pencillien.
 
Originally posted by SeleucusNicator


The British invented modern concentration camps. The Germans, however, perfected them.
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The British invented modern concentration camps. This was done during the Boer war. Then around thirty years later the Germans perfected them you say. I think there has to be a differentiation between a concentration camp and a death camp. A concentration camp is where you keep people who are for some reason or other considered a threat to the state. A death camp is a place where people are exterminated in almost fully automated fashion. Concentration camp + Fordism = death camp.
 
Originally posted by Constantine
Canada discovered how to make insulin not pencillien.
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How many times does it have to be said? The inventor of insulin was Romanian Nicolae Paulescu.

From Wikipedia

Nicolae Paulescu (October 30, 1869, Bucharest - July 17, 1931, Bucharest) was a Romanian physiologist, professor and the discoverer of insulin.

Since his early years of school, he displayed a remarkable intelligence, learning French, Latin and Greek and a few years later he spoke fluently these languages and read classical works of Latin and Greek literature in the original. He also had a particular talent for drawing and music and special inclinations to natural and physicochemical sciences.

He left for Paris in the autumn of 1888, where he entered the Faculty of Medicine. In 1897 he obtained the title of Doctor of Medicine and, at the same time, the rank of deputy surgeon general of the Notre Dame du Perpetuel-Secours Hospital.

In 1900, Paulescu returned to Romania, where he remained until his death (1931) as Head of the Physiology Department at the Faculty of Medicine and also Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Hospital St. Vincent de Paul in Bucharest.

In 1916, Paulescu obtained an aqueous pancreatic extract which, injected into a diabetic dog, proved efficacious. After a gap caused by World War I, he resumed his research and succeded in isolating the antidiabetic pancreatic hormone ("Pancreine").

From April 24 to June 23, 1921, Paulescu published four papers at the Romanian Section of the Society of Biology in Paris:

* The effect of the pancreatic extract injected into a diabetic animal by way of the blood.
* The influence of the time elapsed from the intravenous pancreatic injection into a diabetic animal.
* The effect of the pancreatic extract injected into a normal animal by way of the blood.

He also made an exhaustive paper on this subject called "Research on the role of the pancreas in food assimilation" which was sent on June 22 to the Archives Internationales de Physiologie in Liege, Belgium, which was published in the August 1921 issue.

He also patented the process of manufacturing the pancreine (his name of insulin) with patent no. 6254 of April 10, 1922 at the Minister of Industry and Trade in Romania.

Eight months after the publishing of Paulescu's works, doctor Frederick Grant Banting and biochemist John James Richard Macleod from Canada, working at the University of Toronto, announced their results about the hyperglycemia of diabetic dogs, using a pancreatic extract. Their conclusion was that Paulescu's paper was correct, being simply a confirming paper, with direct references to that article.

In the next year, to everyone's surprise, they receive the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The merits of Nicolae Paulescu, as being the first to discover the insulin, were recognized only after 50 years from the first patent of procedure to produce insulin.
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Some comparisons giving Nobel Prizes for certain American Universities and certain countries: (to back up my claim about some American research institutions contributing more to the world than some countries or continents)

Univerity of Chicago (Chicago, IL):http://www-news.uchicago.edu/resources/nobel/ 75 Nobel Prizes
Germany: 73 Nobel Prizes
MIT (Cambridge, MA):http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/nobels.html 57 Nobel Prizes
France: 42 Nobel Prizes
Harvard University (Cambridge, MA):http://www.news.harvard.edu/glance/ 40 Nobel Prizes
Caltech (Pasadena, CA):http://www.caltech.edu/nobel-crafoord/ 29 Nobel Prizes
Sweden: 23
Italy: 15
Netherlands: 15
USSR: 15

Continent of Africa: 5
Continent of Australia: 5
Continent of South America: 5

Oh, and United States as a whole, 242. Next closest is Great Britain with 85. Only ten more than the American university with the most.

Source
 
Re: Nobel prizes.
And Europe is the winner. If you combine Europe then Europeans are clearly the most ingenious people on earth. They have also been the most cruel, and clearly there is a connection between cruelty and scientfic invention. It has to do with ambition, I think.
 
Being the birthplace of civilisation, Europe has the edge.

Actually, we invented the the United States.

Our greatest big baby! :king:
 
Originally posted by Dr. Dr. Doktor
Mesopotamia, not Europe, invented civilization, I would say.
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I would argue, however, that the civilization we enjoy now is not directly descendened from Mesopotamia.
 
Originally posted by Dr. Dr. Doktor
Mesopotamia, not Europe, invented civilization, I would say.
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While we're at it, AFRICA invented humans, I would say. ;)
 
I would argue, however, that the civilization we enjoy now is not directly descendened from Mesopotamia.

Perhaps not directly, but if you consider that the Greeks were vastly influenced by the Mepsotamians, and that the Romans were vastly influenced by the Greeks, and that Western Civilization is a product of the Roman Empire, then we have a clear link between us and the Mesopotomians.
 
Originally posted by luiz

Perhaps not directly, but if you consider that the Greeks were vastly influenced by the Mepsotamians
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I wish to dispute the vastness of this influence, but can you first elaborate as to what you mean?
 
Originally posted by SeleucusNicator


I would argue, however, that the civilization we enjoy now is not directly descendened from Mesopotamia.
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Certainly there was a break somewhere. Whether that came with Solon's or Pericles' Athens or with the spread of Christianity, particularily with Constantine the Greats adoption of it to become the state religion of the Roman empire, or it came with the Renaissance it is difficult to say. However I would say that many of the fundamentals which are with us today was already there among the mesopatmian civilizations. In religion Zarathustra, actually perhaps more to the east of Mesopotamia, did invent a sort of 'unstable monotheism', that is a dominant deity for good and a dominant 'deity' for evil. More like a dualistic worldview actually. Does that not conform more with modern people's worldview than the monotheism of Judaism, which relegate no room for evil as a basis for theological discourse? Also the very word a 'Babylonian economy', meaning an economy based on unsound credit (banks were a fact of babylonian life) and characterised by a centre-periphery dichitomy, that is wealth flows to the centre, and which is further marred by an overly capitalist ethos, is more akin to the modern world than is either the Greek or Roman primarily slavery based, and blatantly colonialistic, economies. Also newer studies (published by Harvard press) have shown that in fact the individual Babylonian city was allowed a great deal of independence from central authority. In fact the king was more a figure-head and war-leader, than an actual day to day leader in the everyday decisions, of often great economic an social complexity, taking place in the 'city councils'.
 
Originally posted by Dr. Dr. Doktor


Certainly there was a break somewhere. Whether that came with Solon's or Pericles' Athens or with the spread of Christianity, particularily with Constantine the Greats adoption of it to become the state religion of the Roman empire, or it came with the Renaissance it is difficult to say. However I would say that many of the fundamentals which are with us today was already there among the mesopatmian civilizations. In religion Zarathustra, actually perhaps more to the east of Mesopotamia, did invent a sort of 'unstable monotheism', that is a dominant deity for good and a dominant 'deity' for evil. More like a dualistic worldview actually. Does that not conform more with modern people's worldview than the monotheism of Judaism, which relegate no room for evil as a basis for theological discourse? Also the very word a 'Babylonian economy', meaning an economy based on unsound credit (banks were a fact of babylonian life) and characterised by a centre-periphery dichitomy, that is wealth flows to the centre, and which is further marred by an overly capitalist ethos, is more akin to the modern world than is either the Greek or Roman primarily slavery based, and blatantly colonialistic, economies. Also newer studies (published by Harvard press) have shown that in fact the individual Babylonian city was allowed a great deal of independence from central authority. In fact the king was more a figure-head and war-leader, than an actual day to day leader in the everyday decisions, of often great economic an social complexity, taking place in the 'city councils'.
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I would agree with most of the above (I wouldn't consider Zoroaster to be Mesopotamian, though, and no Irano-Semitic city had an Athenian democracy or anything similar), but the question is did Greco-Roman civilization develop many of those independently or not.

There was influence. There always will be. That does not mean dependent developlment, however.
 
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