How are Americans Pioneers?

[Sardonic]

Can anyone give me examples of how Americans are pioneers or innovators?
I currently have the establishment of American independence from Britain as an example as well as the landing on the moon. I just need a few more examples. Could be people or events. I would greatly appreciate it :)

[JoeLopp]

I believe, at the very least, Jules Verne went to the moon before America ... if only in his mind. No doubt there were others before. In fact, I cannot help but think of that very early French film (forget the title?) where the rocket ship lands in the Man in the Moon's eye = Har!

[billl]

In my U.S. History class ages ago, the big theme was the "Westward Expansion".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_United_States

Of course, there were already people here, and you would do a great job if you could hammer that point home during your report/essay. However, the theme that I imagine your professor/teacher is looking for here (perhaps they have been teaching it for the past few months?) is that the U.S. began as some colonies on the East Coast, and then came the Louisiana Purchase, and then a gradual expansion Westward (with conflicts against native peoples, as well as Spanish claims in "Texas and California, etc."). During this expansion, the children of settlers on the East Coast, and new arrivals from Europe "went West" and settled land that was previously "unsettled". (Despite, of course, a history of Native occupation...) These people are generally thought of as pioneers, on account of their journeying, and their settling in mostly unknown and unsettled (and often ungoverned) lands. Once California was done, then there was, many decades later, the expedition to the moon which (symbolically) maintains the pioneering spirit, as do some descriptions of life in Alaska even today--but that gets to be something of a stretch... Also, you can look at some of the important evolutions in business and tech (e.g. the IT boom and Silicon Valley).

[Emil Miller]

Americans are credited with the first successful manned flight.The invention of the cathode ray tube that made mass television possible (a rather dubious achievement perhaps). An American also discovered the vaccine that eliminated poliomyelitis, and the safety elevator was also invented in the USA, as was modern air-conditioning.
These are just a few of the pioneering achievements of the US; there are, no doubt, many others.

[Cunninglinguist]

America invented:
Potatoe chips
Thomas Eddison - the light bulb
Manhattan project - the atomic bomb
Ben Franklin - bifocals
Telephone
Fortune cookie (ironic, isnt it?)
Machine gun
US Military - crackers
US Military - spam
Stop sign
Eli Whitney - cotton gin
Steam Boat (I don't recall who)
QWERTY typewriter
Refridgerator
Applicator tampon
Dental floss
Ferris Wheel
Everything by Tesla
Samuel Morse - morse code
Samuel Colt - revolver gun
Some boring guy - Baseball
Vacuum cleaner
Ford - assembly line production
Wright brothers - airplane
Bubble gum
Digital computer

Lots of other stuff, too. Today america typically leads the world in medical and technological innovations and has the best collegiate educational system.

[papayahed]

Sounds like homework.

[dafydd manton]

I'm not entirely convinced that the machine gun, revolver or the Atom Bomb have been great boons to humanity, any more than Spam, basebal, crispsl and the fortune cookie, which are just so trivial that they aren't worth worrying about. I'll give you the first powered flight, although the first heavier-than-air man-carrying flight was Lilienthal, in Berlin, albeit in a kite. Seriously, it doesn't leave much that humanity has really benefited from. By the way, wasn't Alexander Graham Bell (telephone) a Scot? And the CRT was surely Braun, a German, in 1897?

[stlukesguild]

Benjamin Franklin- Lightning Rod, catheter, bifocals
Eli Whitney- Cotton Gin
Thomas Jefferson- Wheel Cipher for Encryption
James Finely- Suspension Bridge
Oliver Evans, Jacob Perkins- Refrigeration
Simeon North- Milling Machine
Samuel Morse- Morse Code
Salymon Merrick- Wrench
Crawford Long- Anesthesia
Charles Goodyear- Vulcanized Rubber
Joseph Gayetty- Toilet Paper
Birdsill Holly- Fire Hydrant
Christopher Sholes- QWERTY Typewriter
Schuyler Skaats Wheeler- Electric Fan
George Eastman- Photographic Film (portable camera)
William Le Baron Jenney- Skyscraper
Thomas Edison- The Electric Light, Sound Recording, The Motion Picture, The fluoroscope
Nikola Tesla- AC current, Wireless communication, Electric Induction Motor, Tesla Coil, Remote control, Robotics, ARC Light, X-Ray Tube, experiments with laser including charged particle beams
Henry Ford- Assembly Line Mass Production
Willis Carrier- Air Conditioning
Ira Washington- Offset Printing Press
Wright Brothers- Airplane
Sturtevant brothers- Automatic transmission
Harvey Hubbell- AC electric plugs and sockets
Charles F. Kettering- Electric Automobile self-starter/starter motor
Joseph Horn and Frank Hardart (Automat)- Fast Food Restaurant
Lester Wire- Electric Traffic Light
Clarence Saunders- Supermarket (Piggly Wiggly)
Dr. Robert H. Goddard- Liquid Rocket Fuel
Archie League- Air Traffic Control
George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker- Electric Guitar
Karl Guthe Jansky- Radio Telescope
Edwin Armstrong- Frequency Modulation (FM Radio)
George Stibitz- Digital Computer
Russell Games Slayter- Fiberglass
Chester Flyd Carlson- Xerox Photocopy
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company- Nylon
Roy Plunkett- Teflon
Percy Spencer- Microwave
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain- Transistor
Dr. Claude Beck- Defibrillator
Douglas H. Ring and W. Rae Young- The Cell Phone
United States Air Force- Supersonic Air Craft
John Walson and Margaret Walson- Cable TV
Ralph Schneider and Frank X. McNamara (Diner's Club)- Credit Card
Dr. Jonas Salk- Polio Vaccine
Norman Joseph Woodland- Barcode
Dr. Forrest Dewey Dodrill and Dr. Robert Jarvik- Artificial Heart
Reynold Johnson- Hard Disc Drive
George Devol and Joseph F. Engelberger- Industrial Robotics
Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby- Videotape
Theodore H. Maiman- Laser
Jack Kilby-Integrated Circuit
Dr. Gregory Pincus- Birth Control Pill
John Robinson Pierce, NASA- Communications Satellite
Aaron Ismach- Jet Injector (Printer)
Douglas Engelbart- Computer Mouse
Dr. James Hardy and team- Heart transplant surgery
Ted Nelson- Hypertext
Wesley A. Clark and Charles Molna- Micro-computer
James Russell- CD disc
Robert Dennard (IBM)- DRAM
Jack Kilby- Calculator
NASA- Moonlanding
Gary Starkweather(Xerox)- Laser Printer
Norman Abramson at University of Hawaii- Wireless Local Area Network (Connection between multiple computers- Internet)
Robert D. Maurer, Donald Keck, Peter C. Schultz, and Frank Zimar at Corning Glass- Optical Fibers
John Blankenbaker- Personal Computer
Ted Hoff, Stanley Mazor, and Federico Faggin- Microprocessor
Ray Tomlinson- E- Mail
Gary Kildal- Computer Operating System
Steve Sasson- Digital Camera
Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf- The Internet

Not much that has impacted humanity, eh?:out:

[OrphanPip]

By the way, wasn't Alexander Graham Bell (telephone) a Scot?

Bell was born in Scotland, immigrated to Canada at 23, and invented the telephone while working with between Boston and his lab in Ontario, he then married an American a few years later and became an American citizen, later he retired in Nova Scotia.

It's obvious Americans inventors have had a huge impact on the world, in the last 50 years in particular.

Although, Salk's polio vaccine wasn't that great, Sabin's developed a better one at about the exact same time. Sabin was American too though, so I guess it amounts to the same thing.

[JuniperWoolf]

Sounds like homework.

Yep. Plus, who can't think of ways that Americans are innovators? LOTS of cool stuff comes from America. A person could spend their entire life discussing American contribution to literature alone.

[MarkBastable]

Thing is, in order to suggest that Americans were especially pioneering - actually or metaphorically - you'd have to show that they produced more of this kind of stuff than any other nation. And to do that you'd need some standard criteria - like, length of time under consideration (any three consecutive centuries? the nominated 'most productive century' per nation?), the size of population (innovation ratio calculated as Good Ideas Per Capita), some kind of measure of effectiveness (economic impact? lives saved? wars won? percentage of humanity directly impacted?) and a proportional measure of pioneeringness (crossing the unmapped Rockies in a wagon - high; making pickle optional at Burger King - not quite so high).

As soon as you start thinking about it, the assessment of pioneering spirit as a national characteristic becomes evidently absurd. It might just be that human beings generally do stuff, and some of those human beings are American.

However, if we were looking for a single representative innovation from America that has had huge impact economically, culturally, environmentally and in the lives of just about everyone on the planet, I'd go for the electric guitar.

[Emil Miller]

However, if we were looking for a single representative innovation from America that has had huge impact economically, culturally, enviromentally and in the lives of just about everyone on the planet, I'd go for the electric guitar.

:smilielol5:

[MarkBastable]

I didn't say it was an impact that everyone would consider beneficial. But, consider, apart from staying in your house all day, when's the last time you got through twenty-four hours without hearing an electric guitar? How much money do you think is generated each hour directly or indirectly by the use of the electric guitar? You, Brian, often refer to 'teenagers of all ages' and the way in which their tastes dictate so much in the world. What would you say was the single most potent agent in the development of that cult of eternal adolescence? I'd suggest it was the electric guitar.

The senior politicians - left and right - who now run for office are the children of the sixties and seventies. They understand the power of electric guitar music - the resonance and the associations it has for their prospective voters. Sarah Palin, who's about as reactionary and conservative as it's possible to be within mainstream US politics - used Barracuda - a mundane rock song screaming with electric guitars - as her rally theme. Clinton used a Fleetwood Mac song. All of them want to get rock stars on their campaign platform. There are very few clarinettists up there with them.

The electric guitar is at the root of many aspects of the modern world, because it was the focus for the very phenomenon on which you blame several of the world's ills - the cult of adolescence. Whether or not that cult is a good thing is open to debate (I tend to think some growing up would be a good idea), but it's certainly a fundamental paradigm in the modern world, and it couldn't have happened without the economic and cultural power with which teenagers were invested in the sixties, and which they expressed through the Les Paul and the Stratocaster.

[dafydd manton]

Be fair, Brian, it can also be used for anaesthesia - a Gibson Les Paul round the back of the head is fairly effective.

[stlukesguild]

...in order to suggest that Americans were especially pioneering - actually or metaphorically - you'd have to show that they produced more of this kind of stuff than any other nation.

Considering America's relative youth as a nation in comparison to England... to say nothing of China... this might be a bit of a stretch. I do suggest that there is a certain pioneering spirit in the US as an inherent result of the manner is which it is a nation of immigrants. When one considers what it takes to migrate to another nation, leaving your native culture, family, friends... even your language behind, one must recognize that immigrants are certainly rather motivated individuals. This is something they undoubtedly brought to the nation... and I'll note that historically, a great many of the most dynamic cultures were those which had such an influx of outside influences. It is thus sadly comic that so many Americans... often children or grandchildren of immigrants themselves... have grown increasingly isolationist and hostile to "outsiders".

[JBI]

...in order to suggest that Americans were especially pioneering - actually or metaphorically - you'd have to show that they produced more of this kind of stuff than any other nation.

Considering America's relative youth as a nation in comparison to England... to say nothing of China... this might be a bit of a stretch. I do suggest that there is a certain pioneering spirit in the US as an inherent result of the manner is which it is a nation of immigrants. When one considers what it takes to migrate to another nation, leaving your native culture, family, friends... even your language behind, one must recognize that immigrants are certainly rather motivated individuals. This is something they undoubtedly brought to the nation... and I'll note that historically, a great many of the most dynamic cultures were those which had such an influx of outside influences. It is thus sadly comic that so many Americans... often children or grandchildren of immigrants themselves... have grown increasingly isolationist and hostile to "outsiders".

It's the frontier that is both the father and the killer. As people came, opportunities widened with the spreading America, as it pushed westward - economic opportunities, coupled with cultural and innovative creations moved with them - music, for instance, changed with the changing landscape - money was brought in, and immigrants found a new prosperity.

Of course, the frontier sort of was swallowed, and in the world the new frontier has opened up, as American vision of police and developer of the world grew with the frontier - to the moon even. Mexico was largely swallowed by the US, but even more recently influence in all nations has taken hold - the central idea has remained the same.

The problem comes when the backlash hits. Simply put, the frontier has become to wide - like a modern day Rome, the spirit cannot hold, and the backlash is an economic disaster - the frontiers in China, for instance, care not for the identity - they just care for the profit. Likewise, in Canada, generally the sentiment is we like you if you pay, but if you have no money to buy our stuff, we wouldn't mind selling it to someone who could.

The vision of the collective identity, and the pioneer spirit was unable to pass the eventually established border, and as a result, we have this so called "economic recession."


What to me seems the centre of the pioneer spirit, which is something taken in by Fitzgerald and Willa Cather, is something of a faith in the coming prosperity in the expansion - that conquering the frontier will bring a new prosperity - it is the general attitude that really stands behind the war ethos (if not the wars themselves, as they are products of another mentality) and creates the image of the noble, flag planting soldier which dominates cinema. Is it a myth, or does it have ignoble repercussions? Generally that is the attitude - some are left behind, others paved to make way, and others still used as pawns - but the spirit, in its innocent phases, seems the lasting effect of an American vision, which is ultimately unique to itself, and the basis of the whole culture. If I were to make comment, I would suggest that the 1860s were the real time of independence for the US (or at least the white, anglo half of it). And that the earlier wig-wearing independence seekers were still more or less colonial subjects, with some of them anticipating the boom that would follow.

[Emil Miller]

I didn't say it was an impact that everyone would consider beneficial. But, consider, apart from staying in your house all day, when's the last time you got through twenty-four hours without hearing an electric guitar? How much money do you think is generated each hour directly or indirectly by the use of the electric guitar? You, Brian, often refer to 'teenagers of all ages' and the way in which their tastes dictate so much in the world. What would you say was the single most potent agent in the development of that cult of eternal adolescence? I'd suggest it was the electric guitar.

The senior politicians - left and right - who now run for office are the children of the sixties and seventies. They understand the power of electric guitar music - the resonance and the associations it has for their prospective voters. Sarah Palin, who's about as reactionary and conservative as it's possible to be within mainstream US politics - used Barracuda - a mundane rock song screaming with electric guitars - as her rally theme. Clinton used a Fleetwood Mac song. All of them want to get rock stars on their campaign platform. There are very few clarinettists up there with them.

The electric guitar is at the root of many aspects of the modern world, because it was the focus for the very phenomenon on which you blame several of the world's ills - the cult of adolescence. Whether or not that cult is a good thing is open to debate (I tend to think some growing up would be a good idea), but it's certainly a fundamental paradigm in the modern world, and it couldn't have happened without the economic and cultural power with which teenagers were invested in the sixties, and which they expressed through the Les Paul and the Stratocaster.


To answer your question I can honestly say that I seldom subject myself to the sound of an electric guitar.The difference between culture and 'pop culture' is that one evolves naturally and the other is manufactured by business men, propagated by the media and encouraged by politicians, all of whom have either material or political reasons for doing so.
The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen. I think it goes without saying that I am not of their number. Apart from the wider social implications, I find the whole concept infantile and embarrassing.
A colleague once said in relation to pop music: "You can't get away from it nowadays." To which I replied: "That's the general idea, but you can and it's well worth making the effort."
Coming back to the electric guitar, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we went from Les Paul and Mary Ford to this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnm9jTtw7Hg

It's called pop culture, or should that be 'kulcher'?

[JuniperWoolf]

Brian my friend, you are so missing out on some really great music. I'm not even going to argue with you, I'm just going to express my condolences.

[Emil Miller]

Brian my friend, you are so missing out on some really great music. I'm not even going to argue with you, I'm just going to express my condolences.

:smilielol5::smilielol5:

[BienvenuJDC]

To answer your question I can honestly say that I seldom subject myself to the sound of an electric guitar.The difference between culture and 'pop culture' is that one evolves naturally and the other is manufactured by business men, propagated by the media and encouraged by politicians, all of whom have either material or political reasons for doing so.
The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen. I think it goes without saying that I am not of their number. Apart from the wider social implications, I find the whole concept infantile and embarrassing.
A colleague once said in relation to pop music: "You can't get away from it nowadays." To which I replied: "That's the general idea, but you can and it's well worth making the effort."
Coming back to the electric guitar, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we went from Les Paul and Mary Ford to this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnm9jTtw7Hg

It's called pop culture, or should that be 'kulcher'?


Brian...I'll just have to comment...that was VERY well said!!

[MarkBastable]

The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen

Well, yeah. I'm not saying it's any good. I'm not saying it's any bad. I'm just saying it's absolutely central. It's an invention that occupies a more fundamental position in Western culture than antibiotics or space exploration or religious observance or political fealty. I'm not asking you to like it. On the contrary, I'm saying that the very fact that someone like you is moved to dislike it rather suggests that it's sufficiently important to be disliked. Me - I'm a proponent of it, and even I think it's over-emphasised in our culture.

My argument is not that it's good. It's that it's everywhere.

[Virgil]

http://www.sizlopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/Moon-landing.jpg


If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.

[Haunted]

look no further:

LITNET!!!

[JBI]

http://www.sizlopedia.com/wp-content/uploads/Moon-landing.jpg


If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.

Must suck to be the one holding the camera.

[Scheherazade]

If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.Pfffftt!

Everybody knows that it was all staged and no man has been to the moon!!!!


Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

[BienvenuJDC]

Pfffftt!

Everybody knows that it was all staged and no man has been to the moon!!!!


Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet!!!

[Emil Miller]

Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet!!!

I thought he invented global warming.:D

[MarkBastable]

Tim Berners-Lee. He went to my school in South London.

[Haunted]

Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

yeah but someone has to know what to put on the world wide web or else it's just going to become a giant cobweb.

amazon.com is also a great invention. It turned the Internet into a marketplace. The world wide web has been around for decades but it was just a few dorky researchers/scientists sharing dorky data. Boring.

By the way, who invented html? That's what made websites possible.

[MarkBastable]

0
By the way, who invented html? That's what made websites possible.

I was too glib before. Berners-Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee) is generally accepted as having 'invented the web'. But essentially what he did was make the web possible by inventing html. The internet was the domain of geeks and tekkies in academia. Berners-Lee realised a protocol was required that would allow non-technical people to use this method of communication - and that's what html was for.

"I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web."

His real achievement, though, was to see that it would only work if it were universal, and to be universal, it had to be non-commercial. So he didn't copyright it - he just let it out into the world.