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The CT scan: South Africa The MRAP: South Africa Electronic Ticketing: South Africa Camera phone: Japan QR code: Japan Tactile Paving: Japan The modern Lithium-ion Battery: Japan E-Cigarette: China Touch Screen phone: South Korea 5G: South Korea The PCB: Germany Sim Card: Germany MP3: Germany Bluetooth: Sweden
There's so much and it's not difficult to find...
Sputnik, Vostok, the artificial heart, the math behind modern multi-stage rocketry, and space rovers were all invented by the Soviets.
Gun Powder and Paper were invented/discovered in China.
While no one person or entity invented Algebra, the first time it was ever conceived as an independent organized science was in Bagdad, when it was a Persian city.
The battery was invented in Italy.
Again while it evolved over time a scientist in China is credited as discovering the cure for Malaria.
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.
Somewhat small, but I'd say one of the most useful inventions that is used by literally everyone...the ballpoint pen was invented in Argentina.
Humble invention but i think that counts!
Does the Linux kernel count? The very first versions where released while Linus Torvalds still studied in Finland.
LEDs - Japan
Quantum physics - international but Germany is fair attribution early on
As you indicated, most recent advances in manufacturing - Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea. This is the biggest imho.
China’s recent battery tech I think could be amazing, and I wouldn’t lump that under manufacturing.
GLP-1 (we'll see where this goes) - Denmark but also USA
We’re definitely still missing so many :)
Since many other comments have focused heavily on technological inventions, I think it makes sense to add some notable cultural impacts on society as well. As with most of the technological inventions mentioned, cultural forces also don't come out of nowhere and arguably have been around for a lot longer than 100 years, but I think it's pretty obvious that society within the past 100 years has been and still is being massively affected by the following concepts that did not originate in the USA:
There's a Brazilian saying, "Catapulta não é motor" ("catapult isn't an engine"). While the Wright brothers surely contributed with substantial knowledge to the field of aviation, airplanes are a Brazilian invention, invented by Alberto Santos-Dumont.
There's even a joke only Brazilians (or non-Brazilian people very knowledgeable of the cultural uniqueness across Brazilian regions) could readily understand: one of the major proofs that airplanes are Brazilian is the naming "TREM de pouso" (landing gear). For context: Santos-Dumont was born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a state very known for its unique accent and dialects such as using "trem" (train) for "thing", as in "pode pegá ess-trem fazenfavô?" being "Mineirês" for "Posso pegar essa coisa, por gentileza?" ("can I have this thing, please?"), so whenever something lacks a proper name/definition, Mineiros (those born and/or living in the state of Minas Gerais) are very likely to call it a "trem" (e.g. "eita trem bão", "oh, what a nice/good thing!"). Source: I'm Brazilian and also been residing in the state of Minas Gerais.
All of them? The fuck is this American exceptionalist bullshit, lol.
I don't understand how a few of you are so completely misunderstanding this post. I'm literally asking for specific examples that are counter to my current understanding which i assumed was wrong, specifically so that i could learn a LESS biased us-centric view.
But frankly, overall y'all didn't do a great job, and I'm somewhat disappointed. There were a small number of HUGE ones people listed which were fantastic examples, but a lot of people listed a TON of incorrect items that when i looked it up turned out not to be from the country they claimed, or obviously weren't on the same world-changing level as the topic was about, or were over 100 years old.
I'm literally asking for information to learn to be LESS us-centric
My b
Here are some.
origins of wifi started in australia... the centre differential , black box recorders, cochlear implants, the pacemaker, rotary clotheslines, spray on skin
..goon of fortune..
RCDs, the first patents were from the 1900s from Germany and the US, but the first usable designs were build in the 1950s in South Africa and Germany.
Probably the device that has saved the most lives while ~~working~~ tinkering on the residential electrical system.
Invented in Japan in 1999, i-mode is a remarkable technology for connecting mobile devices to a wide range of web services.
It's well-known in Japan that this invention, not the iPhone, was the first to enable games, email, emojis, and selfies on mobile devices.
I believe that the Japanese girls of the early 2000s who created this culture are the greatest hackers who shaped the smartphone era.
Super Galapagos - Matt Alt's Pure Invention https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/super-galapagos
Capilliary democracy,
or whatever it's called that Deng Xioaping has introduced.
I'm talking about layered elections + civic exams.
Liberal democracy has campaign fraud in it practically by design,
thus the will of the people becomes the will of the oligarchs right after every election,
and not even the will of domestic oligarchs for most countries.
Marx' idea of democracy hardly got off the ground.
Lenin's idea of democracy had the unintended consequence of turning the General Secretary of the communist party as its most powerful position soon after he died.
Australia invented WiFi.
The wheelie bin
Mexico: first oral contraceptive
Great one! Thanks! TIL
I've looked into some things I could think of, and alot of them are partially invented by Americans or the first viable design was patented by an American...
For example: The interaction of light hitting something an creating electricity was first observed by someone from France, but the first viable design of a solar panel was patented by an American.
Similar for carbon fibers, or handheld power drills. Computer tomography was first realized by two people, one of them African-American.
Or the things where invented more than 100 years ago. (Cars, for example)