'The Web was invented by the British but exported to the US.

[Chuck Grimes]

True on Babbage - he was about 100 years before his time, and his work
was pretty much forgotten until the later advent of electronics.  But
Turing?  Sure, he was persecuted, and killed himself at a young age,
but in the time he had he did invent most of the theoretical basis of
computation.  A book I was reading the other day had a great quote
about him (in reference to the concept of Turing machines and
computability): ``In this, as in most areas, Turing had both the first
and last word.''

Jim Baird

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It seems to me there is a lot of what, nationalistic blather going on
here? Obviously these systems were tossed back and forth, so scoring
firsts is a strange game. BTW, was the book you mentioned Roger
Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind?

In any event, here are a couple of more names to put on the list: John
Von Neumann and C.E. Shannon. Von Neumann for sets and boolean
algebras and their applications to physics (the bomb and the
computer), and Shannon for transforming Boolean logic into electrical
circuit designs or digital switching circuits.

But in general Rob Schaap makes the best point:

``What I do like about this thread is the news that packet switching (UK
Post Office), Internet (US DoD) and the WWW (Mark's champion of the
commons) were all innovations that took place outside the market.  The
very market that now takes the credit for innovation in general and
these technologies in particular!''

Yeah, let's not forget that Capital is the biggest leach of them
all. After destroying physics and mathematics, it is now set to work
on biology, food, health and reproduction. I take that as a serious
threat to everything living thing on the planet. This is more or less
what annoys me most about the silly exchange between the Prince and
Squire Dawkins. Both of them are missing the point. It ain't about
rational science versus spiritual nature, but about US capital uber
alles.

Chuck Grimes