posted in Asklemmy

What are world-changing creations made by a country other than the US?

Almost all the global society-altering creations i can think of FROM THE PAST 100 YEARS are from America. I highly doubt that’s true, so I’m looking for counter-examples.

To clarify, I’m looking for items on the level of:

  • the internet
  • rock music
  • nuclear weapons
  • ai
  • airplane flight (older than 100 years)

And clearly I’m not just including things that improved the world.

The best ones i can think of are (I think):

  • Rocketry (Germany)?
  • Cheap tech manufacturing (Asian countries)?

EDIT:

Actually rocketry has been around much longer than 100 years. Even the category of “modern rocketry” begins in the late 1800s. Source: www.grc.nasa.gov/www/…/history_of_rockets.html

EDIT 2:

A further explanation of what level I’m talking about.

There has to be a clear before and after, and it has to directly and quickly effect most of the world. For example the Internet. There’s life before the internet, and there’s life after the internet, which are both very different.

As opposed to for example if someone makes a groundbreaking foundational research discovery that effects the entire realm of their field of study, but doesn’t quickly and directly create a difference in most people’s lives, then it doesn’t fit the category.

Replying to @⁨Glowstick@lemmy.world⁩

Sorry but i dont think America has given the world all that much in he grand scheme of things. 100 years seems an arbitrarily short timeline - even my local pub would be a long way from qualifying for that.

Arpanet was American, leveraging a lot of research, particularly from the UK and France. The internet though? you have the thank a Brit for that; Tim Berners-Lee was responsible for the birth of the interconnected hyperlinked network we called the internet.

The US did however invent many other recent and society altering things like enshittification, the rot economy, surveillance capitalism, felony contempt of business model, fake taxis, fake hotels, the billionaire class, and social media, the privatised prison system and its legalised slave labour force, and Epstein island. I’m sure i could think of more if i put my mind to it.

For some things invented elsewhere you could start in Scotland.
Some of these will predate 1926, but pretty much all are still pretty important in daily life.

Scots invented television, the telephone, mri machines, refrigerators, mammal cloning, penicillin, disposable contact lenses, ATM machines, colour photography, the flushing toilet and the s-bend that stops it stinking, hypodermic syringes, steam engines, fingerprinting, vacuum flasks, pneumatic tyres, tarmac, and lightbulbs.

Replying to @⁨GMac@feddit.org⁩

Regarding your last paragraph list, you seem to be under major misapprehensions. I looked through the initial 3 items and none of them were invented by a scot, and so there was no reason to even check the rest.

And of those 3 I looked into, they all either had multiple countries involved in its creation, all of which had Americans as prime participants, and or had Americans as the sole originator.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telephone

en.wikipedia.org/…/History_of_magnetic_resonance_…

en.wikipedia.orgHistory of television - Wikipedia

Replying to @⁨Glowstick@lemmy.world⁩

Piggybacking on Gmac’s excellent comment, here’s some additional detail:

Alexander Fleming (Scottish) - penicillin

John Shepherd-Barron (English) - ATM (although this was a synthesis of many previous inventions/ concepts from other countries)

James Clerk Maxwell (Scot) - colour photography

Da Vinci (modern day Italy) - contact lenses

Alexander Cumming (scot) - S-bend

Various nationalities helped develop the internal combustion engine

Robert William Thomson (scot) - pneumatic tyre