Most American baby-boom kids who attended public schools during the 1950s were simplistically taught that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Robert Fulton invented the steamboat; and it seemed implied that Henry Ford invented the automobile. With World War II in the recent past, it probably wasn’t surprising that kids were given the impression that these were all American inventions. It also seemed implied that television --on which we watched WWII cartoons (in black-and-white) of Bugs Bunny slapping Der Fuehrer’s face --was yet another American invention, circa the late 1940s, though John L. Baird, a Scottish gentleman, is generally acknowledged worldwide as actually inventing the first practical television in 1925; while Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a 23-year-old university student in Germany, patented the first electro-mechanical television in 1884! Likewise, kids were given the impression that an American named “Caterpillar” invented the first track-laying vehicle, often ubiquitously called the bulldozer.
In reality, and as with most inventions,
