Zyklon B, E605
Gutenberg printing press
The Chinese invented movable type printing presses ~500 years before Gutenberg. The process was refined in Korea after that and made its way west. Gutenberg likely adapted and popularized the existing processes into the western industrialization movement.
That’s why I specified the Gutenberg printing press, which is distinct from previous ones. I did not say they invented printing…
Touche
Don’t say that too loud, you shatter the western / white superiority complex. :<
Name something the Germans didn’t invent.
Humor
Noodles.
Civil engineering. And they’ve been confused at how the Italians beat them to it ever since
Tough one
The number zero, sanitation, statistics.
concentration camps
But they were the first to have a bakery attached.
Nope. The Brits did that, in South Africa, iirc.
You are supposed to mention things the Germans didn’t invent in this section.
Telephone
Greggs sausage rolls. Or are we counting the Anglo-Saxons as ex-pats?
Hitler
And what about Mozart?
Inefficiency
Germans known inefficiency pretty damn well, I can tell you that much.
Airplanes.
Germany actually did invent this. The brothers Wright only stuck an engine to it. The first glider that actually deserved its name was inveted by Otto Lilienthal. He died in it. Without his work, the Wright brothers would not have been able to build their plane.
Technically, the Wrights’ main contribution was the 3-axis steering mechanism, which is what made powered flight practical.
All inventions being based on some previous work, is it not the Wright who invented the airplane, and Lilienthal who invented the glider?
Hitler
They invented Germany, that was a pretty big deal
Meh. Strongly derivative work, and they kept reinventing the wheel.
They didn’t invent East Germany.
Schadenfreude. I mean they probably didn’t invent the feeling but I can give them credit for it along with the word.
" I also like hiraeth. It’s a Welsh concept of longing for home."
Weird way to spell “Heimweh”
Or homesickness. Fernweh, on the other hand, only exists (somewhat) in English in idioms, afaik: itchy feet
wanderlust…damn it.
That is not quite the same thing.
Yeah, that’s a good call!
Why aren’t they called “homelust” or “wandersickness?”
“Weh” means pain which is reflecting the feeling better.
The English “wanderlust” comes from the German Wanderlust more recently (1902). In German, Lust is related to the English “lust,” but it’s got less of a sensual connotation. “Homesickness” also comes from German (1798), but it was translated into English.
Any word in Welsh is a weird way to spell a word.
TIL that’s a feeling and not just the TF2 laughing emote
Poodles
Rage
The automobile - pronounce it out loud, you’ll say it something like “ow-toe moh-beel”, i.e. in a German accent. Because Germans invented cars.
The assault rifle. They invented the concept, a handful of prototypes without the relevant doctrine (or for the 1890s one, even a detachable magazine) is irrelevant. Fight me, @bluewing.
I think the otto & diesel cycles are a better claim than the automobile, given there are like 100 different competing “first automobiles” to chose from
The Wankel engine is also a German invention. Though you could argue it’s an improved Otto cycle. Also the inventor is problematic to say the least.
The bicycle
The car
The computer (arguably, with the Zuse Z3)Spoiler: I’m German.
Not the computer, but the first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer (which would be a stage in computer hardware.)
It would be Babbage’s machine as mechanical computers precede digital ones and only if we only allow nonspecific turing complete machines.
It was the first programmable, fully automatic, digital, turing-complete computer (although they only found out the last part after Zuse died).
So I’d argue, it was the first computer in the sense we understand and use the word today.
They invented you
Walking around in general public in only Speedos.
the use of towels as a territorial marker
They draped one over the back of Poland that time.
Modern physics.
Nuclear physics.
Zyklon B?
The saxophone
Sorry, Adolphe Sax was from Belgium
everything that germany invented before google existed.
German ingenuity really fell off after they were done with the warmongering
