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If questions like this become political within a US-specific persepctive, they can have an element of nationalism when considered with a more global perspective.

Many people in the UK know the story of UK-based Joseph Swan developing his own bulb, patenting it, setting up a company and selling it, supplying homes and businesses such as The Savoy, and then a US marketer called Edison later coming along and taking credit for all of these achievements. There are similar stories too, e.g. UK based inventor (James Dewar) inventing the vacuum flask, a foreign company (Thermos) later claiming it as their own. And beyond the UK, most French people will say the Lumière brothers invented cinema, but UK people will point to the Roundhay Garden Scene shown in Leeds several years earler, and of course if you're from the US you'll probably think that was Edison too.

Not trying to take any particular sides, just trying to make a point that your country of origin can have an impact on what you learn (and perhaps also that this article is a little US-focussed).

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Of course. For example, everyone knows that Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin invented and applied for the patent on carbon-filament bulb in 1872, was granted it in 1874 and in that same year founded Electric Lighting Company. Then there were some Tzarist repressions, he emigrated in the US, patented tungsten filament in 1893 (US Patent No. 575,002), sold it to GE, returned to Russia in 1907, in 1917 emigrated to the US again, and died in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York.

Not to mention his other works on other things electrical: motors, welding, ovens and smelting.

Usually who invented something depends on fine distinctions of how you define that thing and just how many obscure things you know of during the time period it was invented.

It's generally "known" that the Altair was the first personal computer. However, from reading Wikipedia, I found that the first microprocessor based PC seems to have been a French system a couple years before the Altair:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral

On the other hand, relaxing the criteria might mean that wasn't the first either.

The Kenbak-1 didn't have a microprocessor, but was arguably a personal computer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenbak-1

Perhaps this is a better choice for the first personal computer since it was a little earlier and more ancestral to modern x86, but it was also so expensive that it was not anything an ordinary person could have owned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint_2200

Information from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_personal_computers

Bill Bryson's book Made in America, although mainly about language (US v British English), also deals with many false and/or disputed claims about who invented what.

On the language side, it also points out that many "Americanisms", oft-derided by certain sorts of English people, are actually nothing of the sort, but rather original English retained in American usage.

An entertaining and informatie read, in my opinion.

"Soccer" is a good example of an Americanism that's not.

Here in Canada, we're fond of reminding ourselves how Alexander Graham Bell was "Canadian". He was actually a Scottish immigrant, and while he did a lot of his early research and work here, it was when he moved to Boston to become a professor that the bulk of the work was done. From a business point of view, the US was also a larger market. He did come back to Canada in his final years and is buried in Nova Scotia, though.

Same goes for heavier-than-air flight, where many countries have their own aviation pioneers (which they of course like to highlight) who contributed various features until airplanes were finally technologically viable around the time World War I started...

Relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_fl...

Something similar happened with the discovery of the AIDS virus.

It was entirely discovered by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier in France, when in the US, Robert Gallo of NIH was given all the credit.

well... like the telephone: everyone in italy know that the inventor is not Bell, but Meucci

and everyone in italy know that marconi stole the idea of the radio receiver from bose's coherer?

Who in turn got the idea from David Edward Hughes (and others)

Everything is nationalistic and/or political. Even the ownership of the Mont Blanc's summit is disputed. Frenchs think it is French, italians think it is Italian.

> Not trying to take any particular sides, just trying to make a point that your country of origin can have an impact on what you learn (and perhaps also that this article is a little US-focussed).

That not only applies to location ( nations ) but also time. An example being copernicus. When the catholic church was all powerful and copernicus was "heretical" with his heliocenstrism, the poles rejected him and painted him as a german. When catholic power waned and heliocentrism won over geocentrism, the poles embraced copernicus as their son. So for a time, germans could claim that they invented heliocentrism.

Of course copernicus didn't invent the idea of heliocentrism either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos

And it's highly likely aristarchus didn't invent the idea first either.

> perhaps also that this article is a little US-focussed

Most reporting is, since the USA is the biggest cultural exporter out there. It's incredibly difficult to convince people that the prominent US figures aren't always the ones who achieved things because their work is documented better and got more spotlight.

Also, I've actually never heard of the Roundhay Garden Scene and was dead certain that Lumiere brothers originated cinema, so that's a lesson for me.

a more vivid example is when a single inventor is claimed by multiple national propagandas e.g. Sklodowska-Curie was a polish woman living in France who discovered radium and polonium.

The same is true of the game of basketball, which was invented by a Canadian (James Naismith) in Massachusetts in 1891.