IRC there’s a museum in Paris which proudly shows all the inventions made by the French. It’s worth a visit, simply because you’ll likely have been taught plenty of them were American inventions. If you’re a Brit, you’ll have been taught many of those same inventions were British.

Jingoism and claiming inventions go hand in hand.

So if you visit a French museum and exhibit on the internet, they’d likey focus on Rémi Després, who was cited by Kahn and Cerf in their paper which IRC proposed the concept of TCP/IP. If you visit a British museum, they’ll spend more time discussing Tim Berners-Lee and the world wide web. A Russian museum might mention Sary Shagan, who helped develop computer networks in the 1950s or they might mention OGAS a 1960s plan for a nationwide computer network.

It’s the same for things like radio, the telephone, mobile telephones or television. Depending on who you ask, the country that invented it changes.

The reality is often more nuanced and complicated.

It is doubtful that any meaningful research can be attested to a single country since globalisation. Every technological marvel you see is the result of international research collaborations from dozens of universities, institutes and corporations around the world. It’s very egocentric to assume that the U.S. is the only or the dominant motor of innovation.