General Asylum

General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

Use this form to submit comments directly to the Asylum moderators for this forum. We're particularly interested in truly outstanding posts that might be added to our FAQs.
You may also use this form to provide feedback or to call attention to messages that may be in violation of our content rules.

You must login to use this feature.

Inmate Login

By default, logging in will set a session cookie that disappears when you close your browser. Clicking on the 'Remember my Moniker & Password' below will cause a permanent 'Login Cookie' to be set.

Moniker/Username: The Name that you picked or by default, your email. Forgot Moniker?	Examples "Rapper", "Bob W", "joe@aol.com".
Password:	Forgot Password?
	Remember my Moniker & Password ( What's this?)

If you don't have an Asylum Account, you can create one by clicking Here.

Our privacy policy can be reviewed by clicking Here.

Inmate Comments

From:
Your Email:
Subject:

Message Comments

Original Message

Precisely so!

Posted by Charles Hansen on September 13, 2017 at 09:37:51:
>> I can hazard a good guess why it came late but it is an economic reason rather than a national characteristic. <<

That is exactly so, and one of the more shameful episodes of US history that is almost completely unknown the the average American.

After WWII, the US demanded "reparations" - not only from the enemy (eg, the Germans and Italians who started the problem in the first place), but also among our *allies*. Yes, that's right, the US *demanded* that the UK repay the US for our help in fighting the Nazis. There were *billions* of dollars involved, and the bill was not fully repaid until the mid-1990s.

The whole thing is rather disgusting, as while the US was enjoying a huge post-war economic boom during the '50s, the UK was struggling to keep poverty from plunging the entire country into a full blown depression as they shipped off a significant portion of their economic output to the US. Here are just a couple of examples:

1) The UK is the only country in the world that uses "ring wiring" for the AC power in their houses. The *only* reason this was done was to save on the cost of expensive copper wire. From Wikipedia "This design enables the use of smaller-diameter wire than would be used in a radial circuit of equivalent total current".

2) The main reason for IBM's domination of the world of computers was that all of the computer technology developed at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing (and nearly 10,000 others!) was "given" to IBM as part of the war-time "reparations". The UK equivalent was ICL (International Computing Limited), but they were restricted from selling outside of the UK, leaving IBM to have the rest of the world market.

These are just two examples of how the "friendly" US prospered during the '50s and '60s, while in the UK times were *extremely* tight and stereo was a luxury that virtually none could afford. I'm sure that PAR has many more examples.

Best,
Charles Hansen