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where. In some cases, like heavier than air flight or automobiles,
everyone in America knows who was first in the world,
and everyone in europe knows who was first in the world, but
the names aren't the same.
We did in fact implement many technological innovations
on a wide scale before other countries and have suffered a bit
on the bleeding edge for our troubles. We have 110 volt power
in the US, and we're stuck with it perhaps forever, but the rest
of the world was able to wire for 220, which is more efficient.
We laid a kabillion miles of copper cable for telephone communication
and other countries will skip that for the most
part.
By the time we finally engaged in world affairs in the
twentieth century, we were already so large that we just didn't
need much of anything in the way of manufactured goods or
technology from outside the US. Shipping wasn't yet cheap,
and services had to be done locally, so we traded with our
small neighbor to the north and our underdeveloped neighbor
to the south, but mostly didn't think very often about either
of them any more than we did Siam.
After World War II, the US underwent a two decade
boom time unprecedented in human history. our population
and wealth grew to a point where we became even more selfsufficient
than before, even as we were coming in contact with
more of the world. In terms of many manufactured goods,
we're different from the rest of the world not because everything
we have is better, but because we form a large enough
market to support any given product. I think TVs are even
now measured in inches all over the world, right? I am not
sure anybody makes TVs in the US any more, but we're a big
market and our influence is still felt.
Being isolated and self-centered sounds awful, and in
terms of a good intellectual education about the world, it is.
But it was an outgrowth not of a bad attitude, or a superior
attitude, but simple self-sufficiency. Americans often didn't
speak a second language, especially in the second half of the
twentieth century. French and German people spoke two or
three in most cases. Was that because the Americans are jerks
and the europeans are well-educated and urbane? of course
not. It's because an American could live an entire lifetime in
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