Troutman, I said what did the Americans actually CONTRIBUTE, not mass produce after liberating someone else's idea. America WAS great at manufacturing, but even that has gone by the wayside. Let me show you what America say they have invented, and who was really responsible.
1. Electrification... While the kids tale of Franklin flying a kite in a lightning storm is charming it was hardly scientific proof of anything other than flying a kite in an elctrical storm is stupid. Galavani and Volta (Italians) were the first ones who really experimented with electricity, developing theories behind it and developing the first useful application when Volta made the first battery.
2. The Automobile... No, Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, no matter how many Americans try and tell you this. He was the first to mass produce the automobile. Germany takes credit for building the first automible and inventing the technologies required to make the work. Nicolas Otto invented the first gas engine which spurned Gottlieb Daimler to build the first car engine and allowed Carl Benz to build the first fully functional automobile.
3. The Airplane... Americans do get credit for building the first fully functional airplane that got off the ground. While much of the technology was "borrowed" from the Europeans, it was two groups of Americans that made it work. Ironically the Wright brothers were the ones to get the credit only after another group ran into airfoil problems and were left to hear about the Wright brother's success. This other group was later creditted with inventing the first "flight delay", now very popular with today's travelers.
4. Television... This was a British invention, believe it or not. Edwin Belin patented the concept of transmitting photographs by wire as well as fibre optics and radar, building the first device that performed this function.
5. Telephone... We Canadians know this one. It was a Scottish inventor, working in Canada, that invented the telephone.
6. Telecommunications... An Italian, Tesla, was the first to transmit data through the air, but it was a fellow Italian, Marconi, that built the first working wireless device. He beat Tesla only because Tesla destroyed his own laboratory during an electricty experiment. The experiment so terrified the young Italian inventor that he soiled his pants. But the day was not completely lost, when cleaning out his pants he discovered the first of his famous the Tesla Coils.
7. The Computer... No, Bill Gates doesn't get credit for this. It was Englishman Charles Babbage that got credit for the invention of the compueter with the development of his Analytical Engine. The first modern computer was invented by Englishman Alan Turing which was used for code breaking during WWII.
8. Nuclear Science... I think we all know that the Americans were the first build the nuclear bomb, but they were only capable of doing so after "liberating" several German scientists. The first scientists to actually make discoveries that lead to this new technology were Enrico Fermi (Italian), Lise Meitner (Austrian), Otta Hann and Fritz Strausmann (Germans). These four individuals laid the ground work for what we know as the weapons programs of today.
9. Rocketry... The Chinese invented the first rockets and used them as weapons as far back as the 12th century. Issac Newton gets credit for explaining how rockets would work, especially in the vacuum of space. But it was Russian Konstatin Tsiolkovsky who published and experimented with the first liquid fuel rockets, 13 years before American Robert Goddard began playing with the technology.
America took many of these ideas and ran with them, making products that we North Americans are very familiar with and are lead to believe the Americans invented, but they did not create them. They gave the world mass production, and I hardly think mass production is much of a "cultural" contribution.
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