What did the British ever do for us?

What did the Romans, sorry British, ever do for us scientifically? Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Nowadays our education system regards the British as brutal colonists who enslaved populations, subjugated the world. Out of the roughly 200 countries in the world today, the Brits colonised, settled or invaded about 90% of them. Which I think is fairly impressive, or at least I think the Romans would think it was impressive. Would we have been better off without those bastard Brits? Now as it happens, they may have some redeeming features, if you look at their scientific contribution at least. Now this is a slightly different video to normal, and I'm going to talk about the British scientific and technological achievements and inventions, even though I could mention trivial things like the British invention of some of the best countries in the world like Australia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, America. Well, maybe not invented, but they were certainly highly influenced. Or even the only decent country in the Middle East, which is Israel, courtesy of Mr Balfour. And many other countries that have a great deal to be proud of. Proud of such as Malaya, South Africa, Fiji, Kenya, Botswana, Sri Lanka, India, all wonderful British creations. But we're a science channel, and we're going to look at science. Now the list is long of scientific achievements, and I'm only going to look at the really big ones and some of the more important ones. Let's start. Let's start with transport and engines. So the British invented the railways, steel tracks, railway locomotives. In fact, wherever the British went, railways followed. So they put in railways in Germany, India, South America. And of course, everybody copied that. Then we have the modern bicycle, initially called the rover safety bicycle, apparently. Chain drive, caster steering, and relatively small wheels. Invented by the rover company. In fact, in Poland, the world for bicycle is rover. And yes, it's the same company that makes Land Rovers. Now the British obviously invented the first engines, which was the steam engine. And that broke us free from backbreaking animal and human powered devices. Now, while the British were inventing the steam engine, they of course had to invent the piston. And more importantly, the piston ring that seals the piston, a truly remarkable technological invention, which is even now being developed further. And the piston and piston ring is the basis for petrol engines and diesel engines. In fact, virtually every engine. So no Brits, no engines. Next, they invented the first engine powered ships, obviously steam powered ships, propellers, steel ships, the steam turbine, initially for powering ships, but now it powers the generators in every coal electricity generating plant and every nuclear generating plant. So that's about 50% of all the electricity that's generated today, all courtesy of Mr Parsons. Then we have the jet engine. Yes, the Germans independently invented it in the Second World War. The turboprop engine invented by the Brits, the first turboprop aircraft. So if you don't fly on an airplane powered by a jet engine, which was largely due to the Brits, it's a turboprop airplane, which was invented by the Brits. And of course, the turboprop is the basis of the gas turbine, which is used to generate another 20% of the world's electricity. We also have the modern car layer, front drive, transverse engine, independent suspension, CV joints on the front wheels. Before that, companies tried all sorts of arrangements. So for example, the Germans famously had the engine and everything at the back. But since 1959, most cars use the mini minor equivalent. Ever been on a vehicle that uses steel wheels? Pretty uncomfortable. But don't worry. The Brits invented the pneumatic tyre. So it looks like the British have invented pretty much everything that runs on the road. They didn't invent the road. That's just about it. Well, actually, they did. Tarmac roads or tarmacadam was invented by a Scot and a Welshman. Then we have steel bridges. And here's a very interesting one. The modern traffic roundabout in the 1960s. You might think that roundabouts have been around since way before the 1960s, but the Brits had the inspired idea of changing the rules for the roundabout. In other words, yield to enter, which massively increases the efficiency of the roundabout. Then we have the cat's eye reflector. Caterpillar tracks, which the Brits invented just before they invented the tank. So there's much more we could talk about in terms of transport technology, but we must move on to other industrial and technological stuff. Now, of course, Britain famously started the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century. It's debated why it started in the United Kingdom, but clearly there was something special going on that made that spark. Of course, it started in the textile and agricultural industry. In the textiles, they invented the flying shuttle, powered looms, the spinning mill for making threads. In fact, if you didn't have the Brits, you don't have the very fine modern clothings which we have now, which is also incredibly cheap compared with what it used to be. In the agricultural industries, there are all sorts of mechanical devices like the mechanical seed drill, the haymaking threshing machine, but also really important things like phosphate, fertiliser production, selective breeding. But that's just the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. If you're going to have an Industrial Revolution, you need a big build, big build buildings, and so the British gave us Portland cement, a revolutionary type of cement. Where would we be without it? Then we have things like steel boring machines, which led to the steel, the modern lathe, which is ubiquitous in metal cutting. Hyper-accurate machines for measuring things, the micrometer, for instance. You cannot have modern engineering unless you have hyper-fine methods for measuring things. We have stainless steel, the production of polyethylene, a very famous plastic used in just about everything. The steel hammer for forging steel and making it much stronger. The Bessemer steel process, the first mass production of steel effectively, and then the mass production of glass using the now ubiquitous virtually tin flotation method. All right, let's go a little bit electrical. So the first long distance communication cables were invented by the Brits, coaxial cable. This was used for underwater cables to link the UK to America and other places. The first intercontinental communication, the birth of the internet in a sense. It was the first time that we could communicate all around the world. The telephone, Alexander Graham Bell was a Scotsman. Television, liquid crystal, cavity magnetron. You've never heard of the cavity? It's in your microwave, but probably more importantly, the first radars to a large extent used the cavity magnetron, which was a revolution. Then if we go a little bit medical, we've got cat scanners, ultrasound scanners, the first town to have chlorinated water. How about the first electronic programmable computer to crack German codes in the Second World War? Accurate navigation using highly accurate clocks, the chronometers, and the first workable atomic clock. Then we have the world wide web, a gas stove, tin cans, and a really big one. I know you've been wondering where I get to this one, an alarm clock that makes tea. Again, I could have added many, many more things, but let's go on to fundamental science, the stuff that all other science and technology actually depends upon. But before we do that, maybe just like and subscribe. How about the discovery of the proton, neutron, and electron? The three building blocks of, well, frankly, just about everything, all discovered by Brits. And the Brits also discovered the opposite of matter, which is antimatter by Paul Dirac. And more recently, the last particle in the standard physics model of just about everything, the Higgs boson, which was proposed by Peter Biggs. Now let's go a little bit bigger, but not a great deal bigger. The atom, the model of the atom with a hard nucleus with the electrons flying around, was essentially discovered by the British. And I'm being a little bit loose there because there is a famous New Zealander involved with this. But frankly, in those days, Kiwis were basically Brits. What about biology? Well, in my view, the two biggest advances in biology were both discovered by Brits. The first one is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. And then you have the discovery of the structure of DNA at Cambridge University. Fundamental molecular biology of which the whole DNA revolution has been based on. And yes, I know Watson was an American and Wilkins was a Kiwi. Anyway, of course, the discovery of the structure meant this explosion in growth of the whole DNA industry effectively, such as DNA fingerprinting, now invented by the Brits. Now let's go back to more basic, very fundamental and possibly more important medicine. We have antiseptics, antibiotics, vaccines, all three invented by Brits. But let's go back to physics now. So we have Newton's laws of motion, Newton's laws of gravity. Where would we be without Sir Isaac Newton? We essentially couldn't predict anything. Back on to the physics, the laws of optics and the way that radio waves travel. Light, the laws of electromagnetic propagation in signals and wires. Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell's. You don't have any mobile phones or computers or communication cables without Maxwell. And then we have electromagnetic induction from Michael Faraday's. If you don't understand magnetic induction, there are no electric motors. There's no electric generators. Basically, the whole backbone of the electricity system, you owe it to the Brits. Or in mathematics, and there are a lot here, so I'm going to pick the really big one, which is the invention of calculus. There was another guy called Leibniz who also invented it at the same time. But essentially, Newtonian calculus is at the basis of a huge amount of advanced science of engineering. It's as fundamental as algebra and arithmetic. Now, this list is not complete. There are literally a zillion other things that the Brits have contributed to. Actually, there is just one more, the flushing loo. Now, obviously, much of what those British scientists did was based on other scientists from lots of other countries. And the Brits were just part of this magnificent thing which we call Western civilization. Of course, there were French and there were Germans. And the scientific development and advancement then spread to the United States and now to the Far East. But the contribution of the Brits were utterly fundamental on so many levels. Now, without those advancement, our lives would be short, harsh, and frankly, just bloody horrible. The world's population would still be about 1 billion, which is what it was in about 1800, rather than the roughly 8 billion that it is today without that wonderful science and technology. Now, if you add up all the bad things that the Brits may have done, the Anritsa massacre, the Bengal famine, and all the other bad things that happened, albeit only occasionally considering the attitudes of the times. But even if you add all those up, it's not a drop in the bucket compared with what has been achieved and the lives that have been saved. How many lives, how many babies, children were saved by antibiotics and antiseptics, clean water, or the uses of electricity, communications and transport? Famines are effectively a thing of the past because, well, for one reason, we can ship food around from one place to another very, very easily. Now, look, it turns out that I was born in England, and even though I'm an Aussie, so I am biased. But I don't think it makes sense to be proud of what your ancestors did or were unless you, there's some evidence that you carry on those ideas, values, and traditions. But even if you don't measure up to those ancestors or other people's ancestors, it's just bad form not to appreciate what those people did for us. The contribution of the Brits was truly incredible, and we should all be grateful that they came along and did more than virtually any other group to pull humanity out of the appalling difficult lives that existed before the 1800s. So, do you think the ledger for those bastard Brits, is it positive or negative?