Bad news for Tony Fadell, a Michiganite and inventor of the iPod. In an interview yesterday, Gordon Brown claimed the ubiquitous device in the name of Mother England.
While talking about the economy during daytime television show, This Morning, Brown let it drop that it was a Briton who in fact invented the iPod.
"Companies …
How could the Reg compare a star of international industrial design to a house painter? Anybody who works for the Apple company is touched by the majesty of Jobs and glows with a holy, radiant aura. And of course the *only* reason that you could *possibly* dare to disrespect an Apple employee is because you're an Intel fanboy. I'm shocked, disturbed, and disappointed that the Reg could so carelessly sideline the Apple minority - it borders on racism!
Wasn't America a British invention? I'm pretty sure Britain played a large part in colonizing the New World. So maybe Gordon is claiming some sort of ancestral right to anything American?
Faraday *invented* magnetism ?? Damn, I knew I was worshiping the wrong God !!
If Gordon Brown said the world is round, I'd get want to get confirmatory measurements in TEN different ways before I'd agree to it !!
@Mono Ape - Them prophets didn't wear no underpants. They weren't invented yet !!
@Tom Welsh - "We dare say there's a subtle difference between the house painter and architect". How true, and there is no doubt which of the two is more important." - So true !! You only have to look at the damage done by a certain house-painter, with a tooth-brush mustache, from Vienna to know who's more important !!
@So what are you supposed to do while waiting several hours as they clear the wrong kind of fluff off the track? - In a word - bonk ?? It is a no-calorie, environmentally-friendly exercise that is relatively non-addictive and is also good for population control !! Post-coital ciggies aren't allowed on British trains, though !!
@James Dunne - Gordon bashing is not new to me !! Been bashing him since he was a Chancellor. He has been trying very hard to make micromanaging control-freakery into an art-form !! That's an anathema to my religious belief that good employees should be told what to do and then be allowed to get on with it !!
@George Schultz - you must not dismiss you illustrious president so blithely. After all, he bravely flew around in the skies over Texas defending those vast herds of cattle from attacks by the Viet Cong !! The fact that he can't tell where the Viet Cong were, even with a map with a BIG cross marked on it, is beside the point !!
I was at an event a couple of months ago where Alistair Darling spoke. He mentioned visiting a school once where a surly pupil complained that "we don't make anything in Britain any more." Darling said he retorted by pointing out that a business just down the road from the school had developed "the chip that made the iPod possible."
So I suspect Chinese whispers to Brown made him spout this nonsense.
Just to add to my comment above, re why brits with tallent would stay in Britain.
I just read Steven Moffat's writing for Spielberg & Jackson now... bugger. I knew we should have shut our collective mouths when we were discussion Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Press Gang etc.
There's another one who'll end up working abroad for more money and a better life than the UK offers. Sadly he'll end up in USA, because mainland Europe requires something less linguistic..... (think of Triplets of Belleville, Abre los ochos, Taxi, Sunshine) due to the language problem.
The old "we invented...", "no, no! WE invented..."
In Brazil, we are taught that Santos Dumond invented the airplane, for example And the wrist-watch too, to be able to see the time while flying without having to fish in his pockets for the watch. If it's true or not... who cares.
But I did recently learn that lots of Americans believe Henry Ford invented the automobile! (it was in a little magazine distributed by a famous insurance company here in Dubyaland) Seriously, how stupid is that? He did do some neat things with his production line and all, revolutionary surely, but he was decades late on "inventing" the car.
So, I guess people will keep arguing over these things forever... even if all the crap is made in China anyway.
I think we're missing a vital point - the ipod wasn't an invention - just a product. However by British standards it was an invention, an invention of hype, marketing and spin. New Labour/Tory like nothing but marketing, hype and spin.
We don't invent things here, we don't manufacture things here, we just get some guy to polish it, label it, and drink a latte after everyone else has finished the work.
What makes the ipod an ipod is not the electronics but the design. The ipod was not the first MP3 player (see http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/10/ft_first_mp3_player/)
The ipod is much more an industrial design exercise than an electronics exercise so the bulk of the credit should go to Jon Ive (a Pom) and his crew rather then the electronics boys.
In the USA, at least, industrial design can be patented and considered "inventions"
Principal designer was Jonathan Ives, who also designed the iPhone and iMac.
And Brown didn't say it was *invented* in Britain (like the Reg is suggesting) - just that a Brit was involved.
@AC re: Moffat writing for Jackson & Spielberg - that's because he's a fucking good writer, producing the best Doctor Who stories. You know it, I know it, Jackson and Spielberg know it, it's only Russell "I'm the best writer because I'm the head writer" Davies that is completely blind to it.
(Don't the government spend tens of millions of our taxes each year on PR and firms to advise them? You'd think they could get something simple right wouldn't you?)
Is anyone else reminded of the wonderful habit the Russians had (maybe they still do - who cares?) of claiming priority on every invention by the hand of Man? Aleksandr Lodygin invented the incandescent light bulb, baseball was swiped from Russian peasants' lapta... (or is Gordie going to claim that it's really just rounders with fancy equipment?).
Is New Labour going back to her Red roots? All this time we thought it was henna....
Before the iPOD came out I had my eyes on a MP3 player with a 20 GB hard drive. When they released the iPOD the price of the item I wanted went up. Massively. The iPOD's just a storage/playing device for music, and it was not the first. Calling it iPOD does not make it new. When people pick up on this stuff and hoot derisively they are guilty of accepting Steve Jobs' clever marketing, HL & S. Sheesh
@Jay Daley - Vint Cerf has Al Gore poop on his nose
After "inventing" TCP/IP, Vint Cerf has muddied the waters by trying to validate Al Gore's absurd claim to have done something apart from having the US Government write a few purchase orders for big servers to help advance the Internet. ARPANET had its origins in the late 1960s, about the time Al Gore, Jr was still sending out for room service from his dad's (the previous Senator Gore) hotel suite.
Big business did Gore claims to have done, anyway - look at how private enterprise is totally funding new undersea fiber optic cables across the world - two competing systems, at that. That process began before Gore got his hands on the US economy and re-invented government by selling off our Defense Department to the Communist Chinese.
So what we have is someone who has crippled capitalism every chance he got while in the Senate claiming credit for a massive achievement which began before Gore hit puberty, made by that military-industrial-academic complex Gore's buddies hate so venomously.
AFAIK native americans don't wear racoon hats. That means they must have been invented by early settlers, who would have descibed themselves as British, . I think that classifies them as a British invention. Or maybe French.
Mine's the one with the Bowie knife in the pocket. I use it to cull the laughing gnomes...
Current stars of international industrial design, my bum.
its a white rectangle with a thumb wheel, what is so astounding about that, face it you bought one because your mates have one and its nice and warm in the middle of the flock with all the other sheep. Baa
Personally I think they look hideous, just like a mini unbranded cereal packet box.
The lack of a search is a total killer unless you are dumb enough to sit there on the RSI wheel until you have scrolled through 160GB of tracks to find the song you want.
If your idea of good design is rounded corners and no keyword search then you sir make Chris `the monacle` Eubanks look like the epitome of good taste.
IPOD Almost any other PMP
Create Playlists on the move ? [ N ] [Y]
Supports Any OS without fcking around ? [ N ] [Y]
Has Keyword search ? [ N ] [Y]
Supports most of the popular audio codecs [ N ] [Y]
Rapes the punter for $$$ to add a video codec [ Y ] [N]
If you like the iPrat, buy one, cherish it, practise onanism in its honour but be under no illusions that it is anything other than a shiny turd in a cheap white case.
Wow, there's so much going on here (and most of it misinformed) that it'd take more time than I actually have available to answer most of it. So I'll pick just this one, which is a problem for Americans and other aliens. Frank Haney:
It's "Scots", not "Scotch". The former are a nation of people in Scotland. The latter is a famous drink from said nation. I will happily drink a Scotch, because I am a Scot. This is not hard to get right.
Undoubtedly. The US consitution has its historical foundations in everything from Magna Carta through to the various pre-independence consitutions of the states. The revolutionaries were largely middle class educated types who were British in all but geography. (They even drank tea, FFS, until it became politically incorrect and they had to switch to coffee, poor sods.) The "locals" and "non-British colonists" had to wait for quite some time before *their* views were given an airing.
Of course, like all the best British inventions, our politicians completely missed the point and someone else made all the money.
your own article on the history of Psion states that they were developing a mini hd based mp3 player, and the key folks now work for Apple, so was he so wrong?
The Ipod is just an evolution of the MP3 player so the Toyota Corolla is just an evolution of Richard Trevithics "Puffing Devil" the frst wheeled self propelled vehicle (not on rails either) that was Built/Invented in CORNWALL!
Frankly the only mistake is that he just mentioned the iPod, why not mentioned the nintendo DS and GBA, Symbian phones ( which use an OS initially developed in the uk) and whatever other devices which use the billions of ARM chips sold.
But no, instead of pointing out that people in britain are involved with hi-tec still, we'll have a go at gordon..
Anyway, he'll be saying us brits had something to do with the video chips in the iFone next!
Am I missing something? Surely it was invented in Scandinavia?
@some other posts
They are not "Racoon Hats" or even "Raccoon Hats" - they are "Coonskin Caps" :p (But they were invented by American Indians)
Also, we still drink loads of tea over here. In most parts it's iced (and in the south, ALWAYS sweet =) although in parts of New England I think hot tea still reigns supreme.
This is just another example of why Brown is not fit to be Prime Minister of this country. The guy is a total fool and appears to know nothing about anything other than money - and I suspect that's because he has a million advisors and financial consultants helping him slide the beads of his abacus.
(last time I used an abacus I was about 4 years old, I wonder if Brown still uses one?)
Is it any wonder that science and engineering in this country is in such a mess when you've got muppets like Blair and Brown running this country for way way too long. Blair freely admitted he didn't know how to use a mouse when he succombed to the most powerful job in the land.
The Scandinavians probably invented the ski, and used it for transport cross-country, but it was the Brits who pioneered ('invented" is a dodgy word) the idea of climbing up a mountain (near Chamonix) just so they could slide down it again.
These days it's only the French army recruits who have to do that, the rest of us can use ski lifts. Bet those boy soldiers just love us for that...
I thought I'd read through to make sure no one else made the "Michiganite" correction. After living their for 30+ years, that kind of thing caught my eye. Funny that someone else caught it. Go Wings!
I did attend a meeting at East London Inventors Club where a Brit there giving a talk claimed to be the inventor of the MP3 player - further information can be found on these links
The late, great Arthur C. Clarke described a personal audio player small enough to be worn around the neck back in the 1950's or 1960's. So Iguess he scores the MP3 player as well as the comms satellite...
that the British invented the angled deck and fresnel-lens landing system (AKA the "meatball lights") that made it possible to land jets on aircraft carriers...
then they get rid of their carriers, and are now pretty much the only navy in the world NOT using it.
Register
Bad news for Tony Fadell, a Michiganite and inventor of the iPod. In an interview yesterday, Gordon Brown claimed the ubiquitous device in the name of Mother England. While talking about the economy during daytime television show, This Morning, Brown let it drop that it was a Briton who in fact invented the iPod. "Companies …
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He's actually quite right
Jokes aside, Jonathan Ive was the guy behind the iPod. Yes Steve wanted a MP3 player. Jonathan was the guy who made it what it is now.
I dont believe anyone seriously questions that...
and
that skunk is bleeding lethal squire.
Didn't read it all, but...
How about that there cinema film? Invented in Birmingham, (not Alabama) if I recall correctly.
Apple fans are horrified!
How could the Reg compare a star of international industrial design to a house painter? Anybody who works for the Apple company is touched by the majesty of Jobs and glows with a holy, radiant aura. And of course the *only* reason that you could *possibly* dare to disrespect an Apple employee is because you're an Intel fanboy. I'm shocked, disturbed, and disappointed that the Reg could so carelessly sideline the Apple minority - it borders on racism!
Wasn't America a British invention? I'm pretty sure Britain played a large part in colonizing the New World. So maybe Gordon is claiming some sort of ancestral right to anything American?
@Don't forget
Faraday *invented* magnetism ?? Damn, I knew I was worshiping the wrong God !!
If Gordon Brown said the world is round, I'd get want to get confirmatory measurements in TEN different ways before I'd agree to it !!
@Mono Ape - Them prophets didn't wear no underpants. They weren't invented yet !!
@Tom Welsh - "We dare say there's a subtle difference between the house painter and architect". How true, and there is no doubt which of the two is more important." - So true !! You only have to look at the damage done by a certain house-painter, with a tooth-brush mustache, from Vienna to know who's more important !!
@So what are you supposed to do while waiting several hours as they clear the wrong kind of fluff off the track? - In a word - bonk ?? It is a no-calorie, environmentally-friendly exercise that is relatively non-addictive and is also good for population control !! Post-coital ciggies aren't allowed on British trains, though !!
@James Dunne - Gordon bashing is not new to me !! Been bashing him since he was a Chancellor. He has been trying very hard to make micromanaging control-freakery into an art-form !! That's an anathema to my religious belief that good employees should be told what to do and then be allowed to get on with it !!
@George Schultz - you must not dismiss you illustrious president so blithely. After all, he bravely flew around in the skies over Texas defending those vast herds of cattle from attacks by the Viet Cong !! The fact that he can't tell where the Viet Cong were, even with a map with a BIG cross marked on it, is beside the point !!
Darling's fault
I was at an event a couple of months ago where Alistair Darling spoke. He mentioned visiting a school once where a surly pupil complained that "we don't make anything in Britain any more." Darling said he retorted by pointing out that a business just down the road from the school had developed "the chip that made the iPod possible."
So I suspect Chinese whispers to Brown made him spout this nonsense.
eep
now there's two people you wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with: GB and Fern Britton.
Fern Cotton, on the other hand....
@Herby
@Herby
I suggest you read the defence of Al Gore by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the inventors of TCP/IP:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/02/net_builders_kahn_cerf_recognise/
Downhill skiing??
Really? Is this coming from Wikipedia? >_>
Moffats Writing for Spielberg
Just to add to my comment above, re why brits with tallent would stay in Britain.
I just read Steven Moffat's writing for Spielberg & Jackson now... bugger. I knew we should have shut our collective mouths when we were discussion Blink, Girl in the Fireplace, Press Gang etc.
There's another one who'll end up working abroad for more money and a better life than the UK offers. Sadly he'll end up in USA, because mainland Europe requires something less linguistic..... (think of Triplets of Belleville, Abre los ochos, Taxi, Sunshine) due to the language problem.
Imagine if Spielberg had made Blink...shudder.
Oh, yeah...
The old "we invented...", "no, no! WE invented..."
In Brazil, we are taught that Santos Dumond invented the airplane, for example And the wrist-watch too, to be able to see the time while flying without having to fish in his pockets for the watch. If it's true or not... who cares.
But I did recently learn that lots of Americans believe Henry Ford invented the automobile! (it was in a little magazine distributed by a famous insurance company here in Dubyaland) Seriously, how stupid is that? He did do some neat things with his production line and all, revolutionary surely, but he was decades late on "inventing" the car.
So, I guess people will keep arguing over these things forever... even if all the crap is made in China anyway.
I think
I think we're missing a vital point - the ipod wasn't an invention - just a product. However by British standards it was an invention, an invention of hype, marketing and spin. New Labour/Tory like nothing but marketing, hype and spin.
We don't invent things here, we don't manufacture things here, we just get some guy to polish it, label it, and drink a latte after everyone else has finished the work.
That's the Britian born of New politicos.
I might agree with Brown... for once
What makes the ipod an ipod is not the electronics but the design. The ipod was not the first MP3 player (see http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/10/ft_first_mp3_player/)
The ipod is much more an industrial design exercise than an electronics exercise so the bulk of the credit should go to Jon Ive (a Pom) and his crew rather then the electronics boys.
In the USA, at least, industrial design can be patented and considered "inventions"
Gordon is correct
Principal designer was Jonathan Ives, who also designed the iPhone and iMac.
And Brown didn't say it was *invented* in Britain (like the Reg is suggesting) - just that a Brit was involved.
@AC re: Moffat writing for Jackson & Spielberg - that's because he's a fucking good writer, producing the best Doctor Who stories. You know it, I know it, Jackson and Spielberg know it, it's only Russell "I'm the best writer because I'm the head writer" Davies that is completely blind to it.
The internet invented snopes.com
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
@AC 08:16 saturday
>> I cannot take my daughter into a bar to drink cola in the hot afternoon, only pubs
>> with family rooms can take her. She is treated like a problem child.
Surely you mean a moderately warm afternoon.
You Cynics!
Our Dear Leader can't know everything.
Gordon was BADLY ADVISED!
(Don't the government spend tens of millions of our taxes each year on PR and firms to advise them? You'd think they could get something simple right wouldn't you?)
Ve inwented it FIRST! - PM Chekov
Is anyone else reminded of the wonderful habit the Russians had (maybe they still do - who cares?) of claiming priority on every invention by the hand of Man? Aleksandr Lodygin invented the incandescent light bulb, baseball was swiped from Russian peasants' lapta... (or is Gordie going to claim that it's really just rounders with fancy equipment?).
Is New Labour going back to her Red roots? All this time we thought it was henna....
Old hat
Before the iPOD came out I had my eyes on a MP3 player with a 20 GB hard drive. When they released the iPOD the price of the item I wanted went up. Massively. The iPOD's just a storage/playing device for music, and it was not the first. Calling it iPOD does not make it new. When people pick up on this stuff and hoot derisively they are guilty of accepting Steve Jobs' clever marketing, HL & S. Sheesh
@Jay Daley - Vint Cerf has Al Gore poop on his nose
After "inventing" TCP/IP, Vint Cerf has muddied the waters by trying to validate Al Gore's absurd claim to have done something apart from having the US Government write a few purchase orders for big servers to help advance the Internet. ARPANET had its origins in the late 1960s, about the time Al Gore, Jr was still sending out for room service from his dad's (the previous Senator Gore) hotel suite.
Big business did Gore claims to have done, anyway - look at how private enterprise is totally funding new undersea fiber optic cables across the world - two competing systems, at that. That process began before Gore got his hands on the US economy and re-invented government by selling off our Defense Department to the Communist Chinese.
So what we have is someone who has crippled capitalism every chance he got while in the Senate claiming credit for a massive achievement which began before Gore hit puberty, made by that military-industrial-academic complex Gore's buddies hate so venomously.
Racoon hats
AFAIK native americans don't wear racoon hats. That means they must have been invented by early settlers, who would have descibed themselves as British, . I think that classifies them as a British invention. Or maybe French.
Mine's the one with the Bowie knife in the pocket. I use it to cull the laughing gnomes...
Apple HQ is in Blackpool, of course
I have some doubt about Gordon logical demonstration.
- Proposition:
"Talented people in England will make company to relocate here" (Hard to believe but let's go with it for the sake of the argument)
- Demonstration:
1) A Brit invented the iPod. (Let's admit it as a fact for the demonstration purpose)
2) Apple relocated.... Doh!
Oops sorry..... I'll read logic for dummies before my next attempt.
wtf
Current stars of international industrial design, my bum.
its a white rectangle with a thumb wheel, what is so astounding about that, face it you bought one because your mates have one and its nice and warm in the middle of the flock with all the other sheep. Baa
Personally I think they look hideous, just like a mini unbranded cereal packet box.
The lack of a search is a total killer unless you are dumb enough to sit there on the RSI wheel until you have scrolled through 160GB of tracks to find the song you want.
If your idea of good design is rounded corners and no keyword search then you sir make Chris `the monacle` Eubanks look like the epitome of good taste.
IPOD Almost any other PMP
Create Playlists on the move ? [ N ] [Y]
Supports Any OS without fcking around ? [ N ] [Y]
Has Keyword search ? [ N ] [Y]
Supports most of the popular audio codecs [ N ] [Y]
Rapes the punter for $$$ to add a video codec [ Y ] [N]
If you like the iPrat, buy one, cherish it, practise onanism in its honour but be under no illusions that it is anything other than a shiny turd in a cheap white case.
Baa
@ Frank Haney
Wow, there's so much going on here (and most of it misinformed) that it'd take more time than I actually have available to answer most of it. So I'll pick just this one, which is a problem for Americans and other aliens. Frank Haney:
It's "Scots", not "Scotch". The former are a nation of people in Scotland. The latter is a famous drink from said nation. I will happily drink a Scotch, because I am a Scot. This is not hard to get right.
A Scotsman Apologises
Napiers "Difference Engine" - the forerunner to the computer.
Dunlop's "Rubber Pnuematic Tyre" without which the entire planet would have piles.
"Tar MacAdam Road Coating", "Cat's Eyes", Education and the Bank of England... The list of SCOTTISH contributions is second to NONE.
And then we had to go and produce that F*CK*NG TW*T Gordon Brown. Sorry England, debt paid. I'll hang up ma sporran.
Microsoft invented the web!
This article reminded me of the claim by Bill Gates not long after they developed IE that they created the Internet/Web. Hilarity!
Re: Wasn't America a British invention?
Undoubtedly. The US consitution has its historical foundations in everything from Magna Carta through to the various pre-independence consitutions of the states. The revolutionaries were largely middle class educated types who were British in all but geography. (They even drank tea, FFS, until it became politically incorrect and they had to switch to coffee, poor sods.) The "locals" and "non-British colonists" had to wait for quite some time before *their* views were given an airing.
Of course, like all the best British inventions, our politicians completely missed the point and someone else made all the money.
ipod and psion
your own article on the history of Psion states that they were developing a mini hd based mp3 player, and the key folks now work for Apple, so was he so wrong?
The Brithright ones...
...aren't obsessed with winning elections and therefore can vote on proposed law as they wish with no fear of losing power...
The British (Cornish) Invented the Toyota Corolla
The Ipod is just an evolution of the MP3 player so the Toyota Corolla is just an evolution of Richard Trevithics "Puffing Devil" the frst wheeled self propelled vehicle (not on rails either) that was Built/Invented in CORNWALL!
This post has been deleted by its author
ARM is everywhere
Frankly the only mistake is that he just mentioned the iPod, why not mentioned the nintendo DS and GBA, Symbian phones ( which use an OS initially developed in the uk) and whatever other devices which use the billions of ARM chips sold.
But no, instead of pointing out that people in britain are involved with hi-tec still, we'll have a go at gordon..
Anyway, he'll be saying us brits had something to do with the video chips in the iFone next!
Of course it was.....
Americans are Brits, anyway.
Just living (for the past 230-odd years) under a succession of rebel colonial governments.
Therefore it stands to reason that whatever is American is, underlying it all, British - albeit somewhat rebellious.
I don't get the downhill skiing reference
Am I missing something? Surely it was invented in Scandinavia?
@some other posts
They are not "Racoon Hats" or even "Raccoon Hats" - they are "Coonskin Caps" :p (But they were invented by American Indians)
Also, we still drink loads of tea over here. In most parts it's iced (and in the south, ALWAYS sweet =) although in parts of New England I think hot tea still reigns supreme.
What about Stan?
We brits gave the world Stan Laurel! Job done.
Gordon to Blair - "Well, thats another fine mess...." etc. etc.
Blair to Gordon - "Well, thats another fine mess...." etc. etc.
@davefb - Symbian
"Symbian phones ( which use an OS initially developed in the uk)"
and still is developed mostly in the UK I hasten to add (and no, I don't work for Symbian).
forgot to mention...
We are a superior people living in a superior country:
Gordon can be proud of Britain, at least in Europe we are...
1) No #1 - HE degrees per capita
2) No #1 - The least number of study hours per degree and student
3) the conclusion surely must be another No #1 - intelligence...
English-English.
>It's "Scots", not "Scotch". The former are a nation of people in Scotland. The
>latter is a famous drink from said nation. I will happily drink a Scotch,
>because I am a Scot. This is not hard to get right
*Wrong*, and YMLT read this:
http://www.tongs.org.uk/wiki.pl?AJP_Taylor
[Search key; Scotch]
I have the source material to hand, and my memory of it informed both my search and impulse to respond to your inaccurate remark.
In their native tongue the Scots can call themselves what the heck they like, but don't have rights on the English Queen's English.
HTH. HAND.
Muppets
This is just another example of why Brown is not fit to be Prime Minister of this country. The guy is a total fool and appears to know nothing about anything other than money - and I suspect that's because he has a million advisors and financial consultants helping him slide the beads of his abacus.
(last time I used an abacus I was about 4 years old, I wonder if Brown still uses one?)
Is it any wonder that science and engineering in this country is in such a mess when you've got muppets like Blair and Brown running this country for way way too long. Blair freely admitted he didn't know how to use a mouse when he succombed to the most powerful job in the land.
Re: Apple fans are horrified!
Umm, don't know how long it's been since you looked at Apple, but they now use Intel chips...
Paris - because she wouldn't have known that either...
Mine's the one with the BOFH logo on the back
@Peyton
The Scandinavians probably invented the ski, and used it for transport cross-country, but it was the Brits who pioneered ('invented" is a dodgy word) the idea of climbing up a mountain (near Chamonix) just so they could slide down it again.
These days it's only the French army recruits who have to do that, the rest of us can use ski lifts. Bet those boy soldiers just love us for that...
@ John Gamble
I thought I'd read through to make sure no one else made the "Michiganite" correction. After living their for 30+ years, that kind of thing caught my eye. Funny that someone else caught it. Go Wings!
A Brit invented the MP3 Player
I did attend a meeting at East London Inventors Club where a Brit there giving a talk claimed to be the inventor of the MP3 player - further information can be found on these links
http://www.kanekramer.com/
http://www.eastlondoninventorsclub.com
ah, but one more thing
The late, great Arthur C. Clarke described a personal audio player small enough to be worn around the neck back in the 1950's or 1960's. So Iguess he scores the MP3 player as well as the comms satellite...
I've always found it ironic...
that the British invented the angled deck and fresnel-lens landing system (AKA the "meatball lights") that made it possible to land jets on aircraft carriers...
then they get rid of their carriers, and are now pretty much the only navy in the world NOT using it.
I don't need a coat, I've got a yellow shirt.
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