Thursday 8 November 2012

Australian Inventions

The British do like to poke fun at Australians, all in jest you understand, we love them really with their cork hats and silly place names such as Bong Bong, Humpybong, Jimcumbilly, Mount Buggery, Poowong, Wonglepong and Yorkeys Knob. How can you not love a place with names that sound like they were thought of by a 3-year-old but apart from crazy headwear, funny place names and television shows about kangaroos, what else have the Australians given us?
A bent stick that you can throw you may say but the land down under has been trumpeting its other inventions also including wi-fi, the aircraft black box, the dual flush toilet, ultrasound and disposable syringes.
Not bad for a country celebrating its 225th birthday next year, all desirable and important discoveries i think you will agree but i think if you are after a country that has made world changing inventions, well i hate to brag but they will have to come up with more than a bog with two flushes to beat us Brits.
We can turn on the light bulb (Brit inventor Joseph Swan) in the living room and watch any modern sport (almost all invented by Brits) on our televisions (a Brit invention) while drinking some cool beer from the refrigerator (Brit inventor) or go on a computer (Charles Babbage, a Brit) on the World Wide Web (invented by Brit Tim Berners-Lee) to watch trains (step forward Britisher Richard Trevithick) or discover the theory of evolution (Charles Darwin, beardy Brit) or Gravity (Mr Newton) and explain it on the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell, fellow Brit) in the English language (second most widely spoken language in the world).
Just because the British inventions changed the World and defined the 20th Century shouldn't take away from the Australians inventing syringes that you can throw away. Well done chaps, the country that invented Australia are very proud and although you may not be as well behaved as our other invention Canada, at least you are not as much trouble as our oldest child America who frankly need some time on the
naughty step. 
Still, Wonglepong, got to love that name.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey lucy,

you didn't just claim to have invented america did you? you might want to read some history books not written by brits.

first the spanish and french played no small role.

second, the last i read we had to tell yawl to take a long walk on a short peer - twice.

third, yawl didn't invent america, you were trying to replicate england. we would have been a big england only with no right if the king had his way. no, we dumped everything the UK tried to create, built our own thing, hell we even made the language useable...

and yawl didn't invent the computer or the www. those were ideas. invention means actually creating working assets.

now, you did invent calculus, newton was something special.

q

Cheezy said...

I find people who like to bask in the rays of other (usually long-dead) people, who happen to have been born within the same political boundaries as themselves, quite funny really... It's not as if any of these achievements were performed by the 'basker'...

Admire them by all means, but the weird, insular pride that some historical figures evoke has always been a bit of a mystery to me.

But yeah, Australia is a cultural and scientific (as well as a literal) desert, that is for sure.

Lucy said...

q - so many corrections, so little time.

First - The colonists were British subjects so the USA was a British invention.

Second - Happened after the invention of the USA by the aforementioned colonists so therefore irrelevant.

Thirdly - The colonists left Britain because they wanted to create somewhere the OPPOSITE of the UK. Again all you mention was after the invention by the aforementioned British subjects.

Fourthly - Just ideas? Charles Babbage may argue as he lugged his difference engine and analytical Engine around.
Tim Berners Lee wrote the code for the Web, that thing you are physically interacting with now and on that Internet thing that Al Gore said he invented.

Cheezy, was just another cheap and fun dig at the Aussies.

Anonymous said...

lucy,

follow this link to short videos from standford university in 1968 (don't know if lee was part of it or not). it shows a browser like application with working hyperlinks (the key component of the world wide web).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a11JDLBXtPQ&feature=relmfu

al gore didn't invent sh*t, oh sorry, he invented the myth known as global warming.

Q

Anonymous said...

using your logic the invention should be credited to the inventor of the abbacus...

babbage was smarter than your average brit, but they don't even know where he was born (not germane, just saying). anyway, to me the key to computers is binary logic and data representation which baggage did not incorporate (based on my readings).

q

Cheezy said...

"he invented the myth known as global warming"

No. He didn't.

Anonymous said...

You ask "what else have the Australians given us?" Try this page for a start - you might be surprised.

http://www.whitehat.com.au/australia/inventions/InventionsA.html