'The Web was invented by the British but exported to the US...We don't want that to happen again.'

Michael Perelman michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Mon May 22 07:16:58 PDT 2000


Here is the verdict of the not always reliable Daniel Defoe on British inventiveness:

"It is the kind of proverb intending character

of Englishmen and they are better improve than to invent, better

to advance on the designs plans which other people have laid down

than to form schemes and designs of their own." "most of our great advances in arts, in trade, in government,

and in almost all the great things, we are now masters of, and in

which we so much exceed all of our neighboring nations, are reall

founded upon the inventions of others." "Even our woolen manufacture itself, with all the admirable

improvements made upon it by the English, since it came into thei

hands, is part of building upon other men's foundations, and

improving on the inventions of the Flemings: The wool indeed was

English, but the wit was all Flemish; we had the materials, but n

more understood the virtue of making them, then the world

understood the making of gun power, tho' they had always the

sulfur and the salts, which are now the proper ingredients of tha

dreadful composition."

-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu



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