Talk:List of English inventions and discoveries

according to a Japanese research firm, over 40% of the world’s inventions and discoveries were made in the UK

Untitled

What source is the from? the link does not list the name of such a firm, and i'm highly suspicious of a claim that can't even seem to name this "mysterious" japanese firm. Not to mention the claim of 40% of the world's inventions seems to be a blatant tall tale in itself as inventions were going on throughout the world longer than the UK has existed. It also doesn't seem to match up. It claims 20% inventions are from America after France which suspiciously leaves out both Italy and Germany two juggernauts who were contributing just as much in that time period (much more than the USA was). Nothing about this statement seems to add up

Radar

i added Radar as it was Pioneered at Bawdsey Manor with the help of among others Henry Tizard,overdue i think.Bullseye30 (talk) 16:32, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Police?

It would appear that the English invented the English police like every other country "invented" its own police...what I mean to say is that the wikipedia article gives a whole list of prior forces which could reasonably be called police.

television

invented by a scot not an enlishman —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.157.114.84 (talk) 22:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The link at the bottom for Northern Irish inventions points to a (poor) Irish inventions page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Preally (talk • contribs) 23:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Tarmac

Tarmac was patented by Edgar Purnell Hooley, but originally developed by John Loudon McAdam, who was s Scotsman. The invention is therefore of Scottish.Rubisco (talk) 14:52, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

John Loudon MacAdam merely invented Macadamization. Edgar Purnell Hooley added tar to that invention to create Tar MacAdam (TARMAC)in order to hold the road surface together. However Edgar Purnell Hooley was born in Wales in Swansea. He was working in England for English authorities but he himself was Welsh. should this be a Welsh invention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alisterruddick (talk • contribs) 10:33, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

two problems

chemistry: - discovey of buckminsterfullerene - sir harry kroto (discovered it with two americans)

engineering: - transistor - william shockley (is american and developed it in us along with two americans)

Señor osvaldo (talk) 00:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you want source with that? CWUTIDIDTHAR? 188.221.145.66 (talk) 18:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Unreliable

Its a shame that this page, English inventions, is not a reliable and credible source of information since it is missing citations to support most of these claims.

For instance, the steam rail locomotive. Richard Trevithick wasn't the first to invent or even build a steam rail locomotive in 1804. That was done by John Fitch in 1794. The first farm tractor was not invented by an Englishman. The first tractor built was by John Froehlich, an American in 1892.

I question who has written this page and whether or not he or she can accurately define the difference between an invention and a development. The listing of rail engines and rail lines for example, they are developments and not inventions.

My suggestion is that someone should spend several hours doing some research and provide accurate and factual citations instead of listing disputable inventions with no evidence. Then perhaps this page will be taken more seriously. --Yoganate79 (talk) 03:55, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

You complain that the authors of this article are unable to tell the difference between an invention and a development, yet go on to claim that John Froelich invented the tractor. When in fact it had been around for decades and he just improved it. 188.221.145.66 (talk) 19:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

AND TREVITHICK WAS CORNISH!!! :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.192.196 (talk) 21:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Richard Trevithick was actually Cornish. That's C-O-R-N-I-S-H for our 'friends' east of the border in England. I have amended the article accordingly, and I will make further edits if anyone tries to assert that he was English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.221.82.219 (talk) 21:25, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Your up for a long hard disagreement and you will eventually lose if you want to edit it, your views cannot get in the way of his nationality being English86.183.201.178 (talk) 13:35, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Why English and not British?

Surely it would make more sense to have a list of British inventions and if apropriate note which part of Britian they came from?(82.8.220.29 (talk) 20:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC))

England and Scotland has both invented a lot of things. The list article would be too big. Also there's no reason to move all the British inventions into one article and then say where they were invented rather than just having four separate articles. 188.221.145.66 (talk) 19:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

its a shame that this article couldnt be about 'British' inventions but i can imagine the reasons why not...(i regard myself as Cornish so i'm a neutral party so far as that's concerned!) I think the Irish inventions page , arranged chronologically puts things in a more coherent manner in that 'inventions' ,'discoveries' and 'developments' then occur in some sort of contextual manner, which responds to the historically fluid definition of 'English/Britishness' and reflects genuine innovation in a particular space/time context - in this case 'England' - without being overtly nationalistic (!)

Manchester Mark I

Wasn't that the world's first stored-program computer? Index registers are NOT its big claim to fame; it's the fact that its program code was stored in memory rather than being a physical device.

Cloning

Dolly the sheep was cloned by 2 Englishmen what about putting that in the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.11.124 (talk) 21:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Sinclair Computers

That not an invention, that's making a Z80 computer, nothing else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.191.68.227 (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Where is the line drawn on inventions/discoveries?

I removed 'Seed Drill' because it was an "improvement" and not an invention or discovery, my edit was reverted. Where are we drawing the line on what counts as an invention or discovery? Muleattack (talk) 02:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a common misconception. An invention does not necessarily have to be the first ever example of something - it can also be a significant improvement of an existing idea. The Watt steam engine for example was not the first ever steam engine, but it was a patentable and historically significant invention. The same is true of Jethro Tull's seed drill: "The major invention, Jethro Tull's seed-drill of the early eighteenth century. was the culmination of decades of attack on the problem by many inventors; it was invented in 1701. introduced (via a book) in 1731, and an improved geared version appeared fifty years later, in 1782. Its importance lay in the fact that it was the first important step towards the elimination of manual labour in farm operations in Britain' (Beaumont and Higgs 1958: 5-9; Rolt 1980: 671; Inkster 1991: 305)."[1] Rettens2 (talk) 17:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not a 'misconception', it's simply a case of drawing boundaries as to what is considered an invention or development for this particular article. That said, I agree that the seed drill should stay. Muleattack (talk) 20:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Better as a table?

Would this article be better served formatted as a sortable table? The reason I ask is that I wanted to view the inventions by date, but in a lot of instances the date is omitted and it isn't worth creating a second list page. That way we could have a default sort by category, but allow users to sort by date or inventor if needed. I expect the counters to this idea would be the length needed and the additional complication of formatting. NinjaKid (talk) 14:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it's an interesting idea and could work well. You should make a short example table on a temp page so we can see how it would look and work. Muleattack (talk) 17:27, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. I have mocked up an example on my user page using the agricultural section. I have encountered the following additional considerations and problems:

• There are a large number of entries in this list that are neither inventions nor discoveries, such as people who pioneered certain techniques, these will not fit the table format as there will be no specific date. I believe these do not belong on this page.
• I have assumed that when sorting by inventor, users would want to sort by surname. This requires a hidden sort key to be added for every entry, increasing the complexity.
• Since the category headers are not predefined, I think there is an increased risk of future editors using their own terminology when entering the category name E.g. "Farming".
• Year-only dates may also need to be padded to ensure correct sorting with full dates. E.g. "<span style="display:none">00 Jan </span>2007" to ensure it sorts correctly between other 2007 and 2006 dates.NinjaKid (talk) 11:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've made another page with a few adjustments to your table here. I don't think getting rid of the pioneering entries is an option to be honest, even without them it's unavoidable that there will be entries with no specific date. For the names, you can use sortname. I don't think category headers will be any more of a problem than they are now, however there could be an issue with transport where there are subheadings. With regards to dates, I'm not sure if it would be an acceptable option but they could just be listed by year then if more specific information is available that could be listed after. E.g. "1965 (January 5th)" Muleattack (talk) 12:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I like your ideas. I wasn't aware of the sortname template, that certainly looks like it will suit the purpose. I'm still not convinced pioneering is suited to this list as the article title "inventions and discoveries" doesn't suggest that they would be included, but equally I don't know if they'd be better on their own list. I certainly like the way you've encorporated them into the table, I think that works. Regarding transport the categories "Transport - Aviation", "Transport - Railways" etc. might suffice. Assuming that we go ahead with this idea, I would then suggest that the article should be merged with the List of English inventors article as sorting by inventor would ultimately provide the same list. NinjaKid (talk) 14:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

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Lasagne

Recipes for lasagne were already found in 13th century Italian cookbooks. The Liber de Coquina was written before The Forme of Cury and contains a recipe for lasagne: http://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/gloning/tx/mul2-lib.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.74.44.236 (talk) 21:12, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

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