geordiegirl2

Just come back from our 7th graders cultural fair, where the kids were given a europeon country to research look at all different things, anyway we look at a display on Scotland, the famous person is Alexander Graham Bell, it describes how he invented the telephone, the writer is astonished he's scottish and goes on to state, while the telephone was invented in the US with US technology, the inventor was Scottish, is this correct?

geordiegirl2

OK i checked he was right

Lord Lionheart

Yes, but your retort should have been John Logie Baird

Sally

"Alexander Graham Bell, oh you've done well
You've found the only way to talk across the USA
Telephone, telephone something something something"

The Sweet

geordiegirl2

i could remember the Alexander Graham Bell part, the rest was a humhumhummmmmmmmm

Rushman

I watched a show that claimed he was an American and the guy was arguing the point. I sat in our living room and turned the air blue for a five mile radius.

Just like I do when some twat tells me Edison invented the lightbulb.

dbj1000

...or that Children's BBC invented that glove puppet in his avatar.

Irn-bru

of course he was, all the best inventors are scottish

snowbunny

The Canadians are rather possessive of Mr Bell:

http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/n...er-graham.html

anotherlimey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

Technically he was still Scottish (British if you're English ) when he patented the telephone.

Scouse Express

Here is a link to his full biography;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

I have visited his homes in both Brantford, Ontario and Baddeck, on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Very interesting, indeed.

Always thought that he was a "phoney"

Jim

Scouse Express

Oops....didn't see your post. I've sent some Karma your way, as a form of grovelling apology.

Jim.

tony_2003

Andrew Carnegie is described as American as well.
Funny, if you do something worthwhile and move to America, you're a yank...everyone else is still a foreigner.

Freddy Adu (over-rated 17 year old footballer, born in Africa) is another example.

I had some kid tell me that an Italian teenager called Filo something (another foreign born AMERICAN coincidentally) invented the TV before Baird...despite my futile attempts to tell him that Baird had a working prototype on display in a London Dept store years before him.

elfman

Actually it sounds like the kid was right on this one (except he was a real American, not Italian):

Philo Farnsworth

Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor credited with the invention of the modern electronic television. Although many others had worked on and built various electromechanical television systems prior to Farnsworth's seminal contribution (including Boris Rosing, Paul Nipkow, Karl Braun, and John Logie Baird), his purely electronic innovations form the basis of all modern television systems, and he is now widely recognized as the Father of Television.

Rete

Canadian husband claims AGB was both Scottish and Canadian.