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/Territo..._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?

[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.

[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".