As we all know, Britain is the best country ever when it comes to inventing stuff. So how far 'back' would the world be if there weren't any?
Over to you.
Over to you.
No British inventions.
- Thread starter tallthinkev
- Start date
guessing neil skipped the 17-19th centuarys then in class history
although tbh the question depends on your definition of british...do you mean the islands as a whole or english british, scottish british, etc
It's called football not soccer!! If on the subject of sport how about, cricket, rugby, golf, lawn tennis, baseball and octopush. That's just of the top of my head.
By Britain I mean all persons from all of the islands.
By Britain I mean all persons from all of the islands.
Tovarich
Banned
How often are great inventions totally new rather than developments of existing things?
For example, Brits are credited with inventing the train (Stephenson) and the WWW (Berners-Lee), yet as steam engines and the internet both existed prior to those inventions, wouldn't they have been developments that were practically inevitable even had the UK not existed?
(I'm not so sure about the WWW example, because I'm not really clear what the difference is between the WWW & the Internet, but I take people's word that there is one!)
For example, Brits are credited with inventing the train (Stephenson) and the WWW (Berners-Lee), yet as steam engines and the internet both existed prior to those inventions, wouldn't they have been developments that were practically inevitable even had the UK not existed?
(I'm not so sure about the WWW example, because I'm not really clear what the difference is between the WWW & the Internet, but I take people's word that there is one!)
(I'm not so sure about the WWW example, because I'm not really clear what the difference is between the WWW & the Internet, but I take people's word that there is one!)
Think of the internet as the hardware and the WWW as the operating system. In other words... Who wants to be Viceroy of the new British Colony of Internetia?
Devvy
Donor
(I'm not so sure about the WWW example, because I'm not really clear what the difference is between the WWW & the Internet, but I take people's word that there is one!)
To put it in terms of the postal system, the Internet is the post office/parcel service/DHL/UPS that actually physically delivers stuff. The WWW is the contents of that letter, the language used in it etc that allows human communication.
Grey Wolf
Donor
I'm sure you could find people in other countries who were developing smaller versions of most inventions that did not catch on because someone came along with a better one, from Britain.
Its like with aeroplanes how they DO NOT DEPEND on the Wright brothers to exist, since other people were all working on them in other countries and someone, maybe Vlaicu, maybe Santos-Dumont, maybe those French brothers or someone British, or Dutch or German or Russian... You get the picture
I'm sure for a historian of the steam engine, and of steam locomotion, it would not be difficult to come up with a similar list for these technologies
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Its like with aeroplanes how they DO NOT DEPEND on the Wright brothers to exist, since other people were all working on them in other countries and someone, maybe Vlaicu, maybe Santos-Dumont, maybe those French brothers or someone British, or Dutch or German or Russian... You get the picture
I'm sure for a historian of the steam engine, and of steam locomotion, it would not be difficult to come up with a similar list for these technologies
Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Actually, it was Richard Trevithic who invented the train, and it was James Watt who actually turned the rather simplistic Newcomen Engine (the first practical steam engine) into something that could be used for more than pumping water. Also the English did technically invent the steam engine, although in this case it was Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Worcester who was responsible, in 1663 (it was called the water commanding engine).
They also have some biggies in the textile field, namely the Spinning Jenny and the Crompton's Mule.
Also, you know, newtonian physics, maxwell equations, radar, practical jet engines, stable super sonic flight, the lawbooks of many countries, our language, the entire industrial revolution...
Depending on how you define 'inventions' then you're potentially looking at a very improverished history without them. Yes, eventually other people would have duplicated these contributions - but steam engines and clockwork 'computers' were possible since Roman times. And yet no one took them seriously before the British did. That took two thousand years. And inventing is not enough. You need to popularise them. And in many cases there simply aren't people waiting in the wings to take over if Britain isn't there.
You may be looking at a delay of many hundreds or thousands of years before TTL matches OTL.
Depending on how you define 'inventions' then you're potentially looking at a very improverished history without them. Yes, eventually other people would have duplicated these contributions - but steam engines and clockwork 'computers' were possible since Roman times. And yet no one took them seriously before the British did. That took two thousand years. And inventing is not enough. You need to popularise them. And in many cases there simply aren't people waiting in the wings to take over if Britain isn't there.
You may be looking at a delay of many hundreds or thousands of years before TTL matches OTL.
Edward Somerset's engine was built inside the barrel of a cannon, which suggest to me a piston of some kind, which would make it a new type of steam engine (that Greek engine was a kind of steam-turbine).
Oh, and although it wasn't the version that was actually adopted, they get colour TV, and 3D TV and the first non-visual image recording device, in this case a 78 rpm disc. A pity Baird died in '46 at the age of 57, his TVs were decades ahead of what anyone else was doing (a 600 line colour TV in 1944, with triple-interlacing).
Radar too, although the Germans were working on it in parallel, and I believe, some significant first-steps in the atomic bomb.