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Termyn8or -> US pride, innovation (5/16/2009 6:47:32 AM)
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The US has recieved some bashing in the world lately, and I am not saying it is undeserved. Now this may be a bit racist, but in a different way. We are USians. Get it through your head, we are not the the ONLY Americans. Why racism ? Because even though some jump down my throat for referring to the Jews as a race (what religion has a historic homeland ?), no matter what we are, is we are in the US now. So we are USians. Our families built their lives here and so did we. Embrace it or erase it.
I am not the only one who knows things, and I thought I would get a little CM input. We have invented a few things. Some we get full credit for, others not. But we have made innovations that have changed the world. Others are probably aware of more than I so this is an attempt to sort of quantify perhaps, or compile those achievements. I am just sick of the negativity, plus the fact that it is early Saturday morning here.
I'll kick it off, because I can think of a couple of things, but I am wondering what others can come up with. Some things are debatable, but if you have one of those new liquid cooled flameproof suits you should be fine here :-)
1. The transistor. This is the basic building block of almost all electronic devices. It began to replace the vacuum tube and everything becamee lighter, smaller and more efficient. Bell labs gave it to the world back in the 1950s. That one is ours.
2. Color TV. While the jury is still out on TV because Baird in England was working on it at the same time as Farnsworth here, we got color TV hands down. The idea of matrixing a screen and using a shadow mask to produce a color picture is strictly USian. The scheme used to encode a color signal on a black and white compatible signal I am not so sure, but the display technology is ours, period. Obsolete or not, we invented it.
Who can think of more ? I mean things that we did hands down. Nukes don't count, that took dragging people out of other countries and all this. IIRC Farnswarth had emmigrated here, but since he did so willingly before firing up his new gizmo, it counts. During WW2 when they were squirreling scientists out of Europe ad hoc does not. Inventions by USians. Someone think of some others please. Try to restore just a little bit of faith in the good ole US of A. Innovation put us on top, and I believe that only innovation will get us out of the shithole we are now in.
Yes the Germans and the Swiss could machine circles around us, but I didn't see any color TVs around there at the time. However while giving credit where credit is due, try to be accurate. I purposely left out putting a Man on the moon. There is a controversy about that and please do not snopes me on that. I have heard both sides. If it happened it was a great thing, if not it was indeed the greatest show on Earth. Either way I guess it is significant.
In giving credit where credit is due, try to be accurate. Don't be like Chekov on Star Trek "It was inwented in Russia" when it comes to just about everything. We did not invent everything, but we have had quite an influence on the world. I am seeking other examples.
T
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