that gave the Russians the secrets of silicon technology after the US had banned the technological transfer of the older Silicon Germanium technology. My ex boss was unwittingly involved

It's funny, you always hear how the Americans were a side theater in the world war in the UK; and in the American story you always get the impression that Britain was a silly little country that was save heroically by the US and never came up with anything useful: like Radar (Alexander Watt), the Jet Engine (Sir Frank Whittle) or computing (Alan Turing).

Can't way for part 2. History -- gotta love it.

This reminded me of another book presentation on computing before and during WWII: "Between Human And Machine:Feedback, Control and Computing Before Cybernetics". The standard Amazon template "Customers who were interested in X also were interested in Z" applies:

http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/20/

The Russians and their Winter beat the Germans, not the USA.

The main US successes was in Pacific (helped by others). Really a separate war.

Radar? First effectively created in the US by Albert H. Taylor and Leo C. Young of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

me and my c**t that the americans haven't invented.

Kind Regards,

I bought this book based on this post! Bit expensive at £25 from amazon UK :(

Kill the damn background music. It makes something which should be interesting unlistenable.

Fascinating episode, probably the best yet. Gimme part 2!

Very interesting stuff!

but in future you need to drop the BG music down by 3dB at least, its too loud.

cheers!

I seem to recall that it was England who cut off funding for Whittle only to re-instate it after the Germans started getting a successful jet off the ground.

And Mage, You seem to forget the simple thing called "Lend Lease program". Where do you think the Allied forces got their weapons?

Or the daylight raids on German factories?

Oh there is so much more... for something that happened a little over 60 years ago, it seems the world has forgotten so much.

The American tanks "lent-leased" to Britain were so hopelessly outclassed by the German tanks that they were virtually death traps. However, the American, in their arrogance ignored the British requests for up-gunned and up-armoured tanks and went to war with the same models.

During the American landings in North Africa, the Afrika Korp shot up so many American tanks that there were wild exaggerations of the German strength to "explain" away their failure. The Americans were only saved by their possession of masses of artillery !! German tanks used to sit out of range of the American tanks and pot them one by one while the American tank ammo would bounce off the German tanks like peas !! The Grant and Sherman tanks could barely match the Panzer III which were already obsolete. They were out-classed by the Panzer !V which were being phased out and they were hopelessly out-classed by the Panther just coming into operation by then !!

The good thing from the Lend-Lease were the destroyers used in the Atlantic convoy battles !! Those were desperately needed and they did a sterling job fighting the U-boats !!

And, *NO*, U-571 did *NOT* capture the enigma machine that broke the German codes, no matter what Hollywood says !! Those codes were broken at Bletchley Park using a very early form of computing (IT angle !!) .

Does that really size up what being British or American is? It appears to be people who, though completely unexceptional themselves, not only try to take the credit for people they happened to be born near but have a pointless argument about it, as though the nationality of the person who invents something is anything other than a completely insignificant fact.

You may as well say "Einstein had a mole on his left buttock and so do I..." than worry about what nationality he was and whether it's the same as yours.

All it says is, you happened to be born near the same area of land on Earth, where, completely coincidentally and unrelated in any way, someone, years before had a shag and conceived a child who actually did something.

Wow.