Besoeker

[quote="komerad"]"I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."
Thomas Carlyle.

Phat Boy Fat

I was told several years ago, and I haven't seen this in a reputable publication, that some years ago the Japanese government conducted a survey to find out which country had contributed the most important scientific discoveries and inventions to the world. Britain came out top by a country mile ! Apparently we have contributed about 50% of these discoveries/inventions. The Japs also noted we are **** at exploiting them ! :cry:

For example two blokes on the Isle of Wight invented the radio, and published their findings in a scientific journal. Marconi read it, realised the huge commercial implications, and the rest is history ! Lots of people think Marconi invented the radio though !

Rutherford & splitting the atom
Crick & Watson, discovery of DNAs structure and role.
Mitchell and the Jet engine
Trevithic and the locomotive
Humphrey Davey and the light bulb
Flemming - penicillin
Whithead, the torpedo,
And that's not even a fraction of it !

I don't suggest this is due to skin colour or ethnicity. It's probably the fact that Protestant ethics allowed the Industrial Revolution to start here, and education seems to have been valued by the upper classes for a long time. Many of our famous public schools and universities were founded many hundreds of years ago by the aristocracy who wanted their sons to be educated.

Britannist

A most interesting read. How kind of the Japanese to come to the conclusion that the British are the top inventors. One island nation praising another.

There's no doubt that a phenomenal number of things in the world are British-invented - railways, television and even the internet to name just a few.

Besoeker

Scots do it !

Britannist

In reply to Besoeker (who posted above): Just about the greatest invention the world has ever seen - Television - was of, course, invented by John Logie Baird (although he spent almost his entire life living in England - mostly in the London and Hastings area).

John Logie Baird - alone and with no help - beat 1000 American scientists who were racing to invent television before the British did. He beat them by a few months.

It's also not widely known that he invented a colour televison system (the first to do so) and he invented three dimensional television pictures (the first to do so).

He saw himself, rightly, as both Scottish and British.

girlfriday

Regards black inventors, take a trip to "africanamericans.com" (or something similar), which lists loads of "black" inventors. I put this in quotation marks, mainly because the definition of being black, is rather like that of being Jewish; ancestry appears to be more significant if one's present status is determined via the maternal line. It was suggested not so long ago on a BBC documentary (trying to discover the African roots of an Americal black male through his maternal heritage), that 30% or more of Afro-American males have a a European Y chromosone.

If one's literal interpretation of race was based on the identifiable lineage of any particular inventor, then many "black" inventors, it could be argued, are technically white depending on which angle you identify them, ie either on male or female lineage.

It is also noteable that "black" inventors could only achieve their discoveries within the realm of technological curiosity that exits within a predominently white society; as such, black inventors are virtually absent within mostly black orientated societies.

Anyway, if black people are happy to exploit and boast of their particular physical advantages in the areas of certain sports (and I say only certain, as where is their presence in motor racing, sailing, mountain climbing, extreme climatic adventuring, or dare I say, winter sports?), why shouldn't whites or arabs or asiatics boast of their particular skills in other areas? Mankind is simply not one breed, and like dogs, whilst claiming to a common ancestor, have become specialised in many areas.

Besoeker

There were lot's of Scots inventors, I suppose.
I would consider the following to have been pretty influential figures.
Fleming's discovery of penicillin, Bell's invention of the telephone, and the use of the decimal point and invention of natural logarithms by John Napier