Pay Day

AS USA is making a huge issue of China poaching technology, can UK look forward to a huge pay-out from USA in respect of: steam engine, atom bomb, computer, penicillin, radar, jet engine, brain scanners etc etc.

Don’t know the ins and outs of the Chinese/US argument but I do know patents on inventions/discoveries don’t last forever. When the time limit is up then anyone and everyone is allowed to use and manufacture the invention. I should think all the above inventions have long lost patent protection.

Apart from that, I think only Penicillin was a British invention, and that wasn’t invented, it was discovered. Most of the rest were German.
Jerrybuilt!

I think Tonker wants an argument

When does he not?

Argument is not the same as contradiction. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says!

Invented?
Discovered?
Developed?
Or…….patented?

Example: Atom bomb.

In 1930's, UK nuclear technology far exceeded that of US.

Berlin had been in contention but losing its Jewish Physicists constrained development.

In 1938, the place for nuclear was Manchester. (OK, Cambridge was getting a look-in.)

But then wartime economy and production imperatives meant UK did not have the capacity to develop the technology to fruition. USA did.

So The Manhattan Project was born: UK handed over its lead in technology in a sharing agreement that provided for UK to also have access to the achievements of the project.

After Uncle Sam had used the devices in 1945, it simply reneged on the agreement!

"Regardless of where it was developed, or who developed it, I wish I'd kept it to myself"!

And the hovercraft

My point is, that those able to, have always stolen others’ technology.

The Romans had no naval capability until they reverse engineered, and copied captured Carthaginian vessels.

Christian monks stole and smuggled out of China the knowledge and prerequisites for making silk fabric.

Medieval craft guilds required their members to keep hidden their tools and techniques when strangers were about.

The US has done its share of the same. It is crying foul upon finding itself on the other end of the process.

I am not defending China, either. Just trying to keep some perspective on these things.

The good old USA!
First Nation to put a man on the moon!

(Thanks to the Nazis)

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,
strange target of this radar plot
And thus, with others I can mention,
the victim of his own invention.
His magical all-seeing eye
enabled cloud-bound planes to fly
but now by some ironic twist
it spots the speeding motorist
and bites, no doubt with legal wit,
the hand that once created it.
Written by the inventor.

Cambridge university has more Nobel prizes than any country in the world except the USA and UK.
They include 34 in physics, 27 in medicine, 25 in chemistry and 11 in economics.

MG, Watt didn’t invent radar, Hertz did. Watt developed it. But he can lay claim to inventing writing poetry from the grave!

Yes ,his demonstration proved Maxwell's ideas.Sadly he died young so others benefitted form his work.Another question- when does an idea become an invention?This reminds me of my old physics teacher saying the Russians and Americans used to argue over who had the better German scientists.The poem was a lesser example of Einstein's reflection of where his work was taken.

MY ENA MALCUP! I do not think you should hold your breath about the YANKS giving us owt! ONE has to only go back to WW2 when they bled us dry for some 60 years thro the LEASE AND LEND SCHEME ,. This small island standing up to the nastiest dictator the world had seen to prevent Germany ruling the world , and what did the yanks do ? Oh yes they sent us the arms to fight the nasty bastard ,but at an HORREDOUS cost ,and until PEARL HARBOR I 1941 THEY would have not bothered ,just as they did in 1917 that's when they came into that particular war and only after one of their ships was sank, in the meantime they were happy selling arms to both sides and making a mint. SO AGAIN ASKING FOR ANY SORT OF PAYMENT FROM THEM ???? """FORGET IT"""" GB.