The British do have some of the greatest minds in the world, but so does America. They both win at being historicaly important. Without the British, America simply wouldn’t be what it is today, and the same is the other way. Is that a good thing? Probably.

I wouldn’t touch mainland USA with a 100 meter pole. that’s right meter! figure that out, americans.

The worldwide phenomenon we have today with billions of people connected to the web is entirely down to them, before that it was some people at universities and a few hundred thousand people in the whole world using BBS’s,what’s the more important evolution of the concept?

The Chinese might have invented gunpowder but Europeans (+colonial Europeans) turned that into weapons that can level cities from thousands of miles away, what’s the more important evolution of the concept?

madigan you are so knowledgeable…….not.

J.C.R. Licklider was the first to describe an Internet-like worldwide network of computers, in 1962. He called it the “Galactic Network.”

Larry G. Roberts created the first functioning long-distance computer networks in 1965 and designed the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the seed from which the modern Internet grew, in 1966.

Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data on the modern Internet, in 1972 and 1973. If any two people “invented the Internet,” it was Kahn and Cerf – but they have publicly stated that “no one person or group of people” invented the Internet.

Radia Perlman invented the spanning tree algorithm in the 1980s. Her spanning tree algorithm allows efficient bridging between separate networks. Without a good bridging solution, large-scale networks like the Internet would be impractical

As far as the British claims…

The Internet was well-established before Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau created what is now its most popular application. A major achievement? Of course! But we don’t ask why Karl Benz doesn’t get some of the credit for inventing the wheel. We understand that the wheel was around before the car.

Tim Berners-Lee and Robet Cailliau gotta lotta nerve claiming it was their invention. It was no more theirs than it was Al Gore’s.

Lend-Lease was the given name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war materiel between 1941 and 1945 in return for, in the case of Britain, military bases in Newfoundland, Bermudas, and the British West Indies. It began in March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the war in September 1939.

A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to nearly $700 billion at 2007 prices) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse Lend Lease comprised services (like rent on air bases) that went to the U.S. It totaled $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. Apart from that, there were no repayments of supplies that arrived before the termination date, the terms of the agreement providing for their return or destruction. (Supplies after that date were sold to Britain at a discount, for £1,075 million, using long-term loans from the U.S.) No lend lease money went to Canada, which operated a similar program that sent $4.7 billion in supplies to Britain and Soviet Union.

And the payback..

House of Lords on 8 July 2002:

“Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, is this payment part of the lend-lease scheme under which the United States supplied munitions, vehicles and many other requirements including food and other provisions that were needed badly by us in the last part of the war?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I referred to lend-lease in the context of the generosity of the United States throughout that period. However, the debt that we are talking about now is separate; it was negotiated in December 1945.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the noble Lord remind me as to exactly how much the loan was, and how much we have repaid since then in principal and interest?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the loan originally was £1,075 million, of which £244 million is outstanding. The basis of the loan is that interest is paid at 2 per cent. Therefore, we are currently receiving a greater return on our dollar assets than we are paying in interest to pay off the loan. It is a very advantageous loan for us.”

So there is a 95% chance that the yanks that are ignorant on here slagging the brits off are actually british.