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Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by joenot443 on Friday July 21, 2023 @09:19AM (#36813416)
When I think of American inventions, my mind goes to the airplane, the transistor, the telephone, and more recently, GPS.

When I think of French inventions, the stethoscope, braille, and pasteurization are immediately obvious. Hot air balloons too I believe.

I donno, it doesn't seem like much of a competition to me. Hell, I'm a Canadian - we've got the snowmobile and insulin, to reference, not a whole lot else. I don't think it's unreasonable for one to observe that some countries have been more inventive than others.

Re:Hollywood Movie Aside, Just How Good a Physicist Was Oppe... by 317070 on Friday July 21, 2023 @06:24PM (#36820771)
The French would claim the enlightenment, the republic, Voltaire, Rousseau, Sartre. Basically how societies around the world are organized and the modern way of giving meaning to life.

You might say those are a different categorie of things, and they would say it is a more important category of things and it therefore demonstrates French exceptionalism. Countries tend to demonstrate their exceptionalism on metrics they are good at.

(btw, the French list of inventions is actually quite long too. Bicycles, cars, airplanes, submarines. In fact, many of the things Americans and English also claim to have invented. Like Americans have the atom bomb, the French have radioactivity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_inventions_an... )