this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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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: https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/TRC/Rockets/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.

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[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Penicillin IS an antibiotic. They aren't two different things. But yes, that's a fantastic one.

Bluetooth, although not quite on the same level as i was asking about, still is a decent one to list.

C++ was created by a dane, but was created by an American company in America - https://techhistorylab.com/complete-history-of-cpp-from-1979-to-today/

Dvd was a multi-national creation - see history section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD

Electric clock is over 100 years

Graphene is a cool material with a lot of potential but so far isn't close to changing the world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

Helicopter is a good one. Interestingly it was a step-wise multinational evolution, but which doesn't seem to include the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter

Linux is made by an American as a personal project for himself while he was in Finland for a few years. Definitely not a Finnish creation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux

TNT is over 100 years

Wegovy wasn't created by a Dane, but glp-1 was first discovered by a dane. Discovering it is obviously a crucial first step, but that's an entirely different thing than turning it into a medication which happened decades later by other people. See history sections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Juul_Holst and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucagon-like_peptide-1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide

[–] gsx@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago

Linux (the Kernel) was started by Linus Torvalds. He is still Finnish citizen and holds the US citizenship since 2010. So I would clearly say it's a Finnish invention. Or citing your source: "Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel."

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If you nitpick your own suggestions the same way, you'll find that nuclear weapons were made by Germans in America and that rock music is a rip off of blues which is from Africa, and so on.

All inventions are based on knowledge that comes from somewhere else. It's the exchange of knowledge that pushes inventions forward. It is very rarely the country of where that person had his or her ass situated at the time of the patent application that caused the invention.

[–] Glowstick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What? No. Nuclear weapons were made directly by the American government (The Manhattan Project), lead by an American scientist (Oppenheimer), directed by an American general of the US army corps of Engineers (Leslie Groves), and assisted by top level scientists that included some immigrant American citizens (such as Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein).

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer

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

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

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

And omg, blues is not from Africa. It is FAMOUSLY a creation that originated in America.

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

Obviously everything that's created builds on things that already exist, but that doesn't mean nothing is a new creation. That's a silly argument.