U.S. claims Canada's greatest invention.

June 22, 2002 5:19 AM

U.S. claims Canada's greatest invention. Congress awards creation of telephone to Italian inventor living in New York. Uh oh. Canada's inferiority complex takes another blow.

"Bell was either a thief, a fraud, or extraordinarily lucky."
posted by percine (15 comments total)

So that's the Canadians, the US and the Scots by proxy.
posted by vbfg at 6:24 AM on June 22, 2002

sounds like sour grapes to me...i'm sure canada has plenty to be proud of in the in the invention arena....like chedder cheese perhaps, or , oh, i don't know, maybe toboggans!
or those cute wool berets with the little ball on top.....oh yeah!!!! tams.....that's the ticket.
and who can forget canadian bacon....yummy!
posted by billybob at 6:26 AM on June 22, 2002

This is about as meaningful as the fight between Ohio ("Birthplace of Aviation") and North Carolina ("First in Flight") - and they're even making claim to the same people and accomplishment.

I think it sort of silly as saying a particular person was the inventor of this or that, when the =idea= was generally known and several different people came up with their own versions at about the same time. People like to think of invention as being individual-driven and not the continuous effort of lots of different people.
posted by meep at 8:33 AM on June 22, 2002

i'm sure canada has plenty to be proud of in the in the invention arena

Insulin, basketball, standardized time, transatlantic radio... um... 5 pin bowling... whole list of stuff (um, including telephone) here.
posted by bobo123 at 8:36 AM on June 22, 2002

Let's see if the House follows its own precedent and recognises, say, Joseph Swan as inventor of the incandescent light-bulb, rather than Thomas Edison. I won't be holding my breath.
posted by riviera at 9:04 AM on June 22, 2002

Wait a second. If Meucci is Italian then Bell is Scottish, not Canadian.

They both died US citizens, so that makes them Americans to me.
posted by skallas at 6:03 PM on June 22, 2002

I suppose the idea that the telephone was invented by people like Bell and Elisha Gray, building on the work of Meucci and Faraday and Oersted and Volta is not going to work on high school multiple-choice pop quizzes.

In other news, Brandi Chastain won the Womens Soccer World Cup.
posted by vacapinta at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2002

bobo...wait a second. Basketball is Canadian? Steve Nash aside, b-ball was invented in Springfield, Mass. Naismith was born in Canada, but as someone said above, no one considers Bell's telephone to be a Scottish invention.
posted by Kevs at 5:06 PM on June 23, 2002

What meep said.
posted by brucec at 5:47 PM on June 23, 2002

And Philo T. Farnsworth never really got his props either, and died depressed and drunk as a result.
posted by scottymac at 6:29 PM on June 23, 2002

While they're at it, perhaps the US can acknowledge that the Wright Brothers were second.
posted by Foaf at 9:46 PM on June 23, 2002

Cheddar cheese comes from Cheddar, oddly enough.
posted by Summer at 2:07 AM on June 24, 2002

ha ha! who names their town after a cheese? what a bunch of wankers.
posted by fnord_prefect at 3:40 AM on June 24, 2002

That's it fnord. The people of Cheddar, Caerphilly and Primula are going to smash your face in.
posted by Summer at 4:44 AM on June 24, 2002

Same scenario of the radio.
posted by thomcatspike at 10:28 AM on June 27, 2002