from wikipedia's list of notable inventions. i see three that i can attribute to government in the last 300 years (highlighted in yellow). and like i said, it was all to make it easier to kill people
yeah, some of these, proliferated because of government. but invention? lol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... inventions 18th century
1709: Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the alcohol thermometer.
1712: Thomas Newcomen builds the first steam engine to pump water out of mines.[155] Newcomen's engine, unlike Thomas Savery's, used a piston.
1733: Stephen Hales takes measurements of blood pressure.[citation needed]
1742: Anders Celsius develops the Centigrade temperature scale.[citation needed]
1764: James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny.
[edit]19th century
[edit]1800s
1800-01 High pressure steam engine: Richard Trevithick and Oliver Evans, independently[156]
1801: Jacquard loom (loom controlled by punched card): Joseph Marie Jacquard[157]
1802: Arc lamp: Humphry Davy (exact date unclear; not practical as a light source until generators)[158]
1804: Morphine in Paderborn, Germany: Morphine was discovered as the first active alkaloid extracted from the opium poppy plant in December 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner.[159]
1804: Railway steam locomotive: Richard Trevithick[160]
[edit]1820s
1822 The (actually more like a shaper) is completed by Thomas Blanchard for the U.S. Ordnance Dept. The lathe could copy symmetrical shapes and was used for making gun stocks, and later, ax handles. The lathe's patent was in force for 42 years, the record for any U.S. patent.[156][161]
1826: Friction Match: John Walker[162]
[edit]1870s
1876: Telephone: A patent for the telephone is granted to Alexander Graham Bell. However, others inventors before Bell had worked on the development of the telephone and the invention had several pioneers.[163]
1877: The first working phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison.[164]
1878: Rebreather: Henry Fleuss was granted a patent for the first practical rebreather[165]
1878: Joseph Swan invented the light bulb in in 1860, but it lasted only a few hours. Thomas Edison produced the first practical bulb and was granted a U.S. patent in 1879.
[edit]1880s
1888: Wind turbines for grid electricity invented by Charles F. Brush in 1888.
[edit]20th century
1903: First manually controlled, fixed wing, motorized aircraft takes place in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Orville and Wilbur Wright. First modern fixed wing aircraft.
[edit]1910s
1915: was invented by Ernest Swinton,[166] although the British Royal Commission on Awards recognised a South Australian named Lance de Mole who had submitted a proposal to the British War Office, for a 'chain-rail vehicle which could be easily steered and carry heavy loads over rough ground and trenches' complete with extensive drawings in 1912[167]
[edit]1940s
December 1947: Bipolar junction transistors used in almost all modern electronic products was invented in December 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain under the supervision of William Shockley. Subsequent transistors became smaller in size, leading to the creation of Moore's law.
[edit]1950s
December 20, 1951:[168][169]
1955: The intermodal container was developed by Malcom McLean.
1957: The first PC used by one person and controlled by a keyboard, the IBM 610 was invented in 1957 by IBM.
1958-59: Co-creation of the integrated circuit by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce.
[edit]1970s
1972: A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device (a television, monitor, etc.) to display a video game. The term "video game console" is used to distinguish a machine designed for people to buy and use primarily for playing video games on a TV. As of 2007, it is estimated that video game consoles have made up 75% of the world's gaming market.[170] The first video game console is the Magnavox Odyssey.
1973: The first commercial graphical user interface, the Xerox Alto was introduced in 1973. The modern GUI was later popularized by Xerox Star and Apple Lisa.
[edit]1980s
1982: A CD-ROM (pron.: /ˌsiːˌdiːˈrɒm/, an acronym of "Compact Disc Read-only memory") is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 Yellow Book standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data.[171]
[edit]1990s
1990: World Wide Web by a British national in Geneva, Switzerland: The World Wide Web was first proposed on March 1989 by English engineer and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium.[172] The project was publicly introduced in December 1990.[173]
1995: DVD is an optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions.
Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience. -- Theodore Roosevelt
My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven’t been cynical enough.