To be surprised at how advanced the US were to us?

[Hownoobrooncoo]

was watching an old movie earlier set in The 50's and a character mentioned her glass of champagne her 85 calories - would anyone in the UK even have known what a calorie was back then?

The first microwave ovens appeared in the home in the 50's in the US as well, same as TV remote controls - Jesus, we were lagging behind.

Novake what innovations would those been then??

Velcro? Asparatame? Agent Orange? Bic pens? Smaller & smaller circuit boards.

Printed circuit boards were invented by a german and ball point pens by a Hungarian.

We had mixer taps in our bathroom in the UK in the 80s

But they did give us Maccy D's and that glorious mac 'n' cheese, that comes in day glo yellow

Britain probably wasn't counting calories in the 1950's because we still had rationing.

Turn out Velcro is Swiss so the only innovation so far being claimed by the US folks on here is agent orange that lovely chemical weapon foetal gentic manipulator no weed killer from Monsanto and GM crop folks. (Or Evil 'frankenfood makers' if you prefer the Daily Fail which has a huge US following on it's website)

letsblowthistacostand

Undad, Americans have accounted for the jutting problem by making sinks big enough to accommodate taps. Shocking I know.

Americans also have the luxury of making homes big enough to accommodate big sinks.

As opposed to Britain, where bastard developers build down to a cost and give you microscopic rooms with paper thin walls. Bastards.

Do the Japanese have mixer taps?

Apparently America has lindt covered peanut butter sweets. Surely that cancels out the sugary sausages?

Have you ever owned an american house. They are nearly all Just wooden framed with wooden exteriors and the only brick will be if you bought a good fireplace. There is a reason why they are all demolished with a storm. Have you not noticed it is never pile of bricks that is left in tatters with the families dreams. It's a house of sticks. The one thing they have is an abundance of land so you can build large if you are away from a metropolitan area and are prepared to drive everywhere, including to cross the street.

What you could buy, depends on where you lived.

My GF was Italian/Cockney, his family came over at the turn of the 19th century. In his area, Pasta was sold.

My family moved to Liverpool, who by co-incidence had an Italian POW camp, most stayed in the area and of course Liverpool was multi-cultural because of the docks.

So the demand came in for different foods. It was the war that made importing foods impossible.

Has anyone else noticed that American cars are reverse Tardises? Bigger on the outside than they are on the inside.

Monsanto is indeed the originator of many evils. You haven't even mentioned Malathion.

Americans would have smaller houses too if they had to squeeze more than 62 million people into a state smaller than Oregon.

why don't americans have kettle - how do they make a cup of tea? On a gas stove?

I thought america gave up worrying about inventing anything new after they gave the world the post it note.

British inventions from 1950 onwards

www.britsattheirbest.com/ingenious/ii_20th_century_1950_1970.htm

www.britsattheirbest.com/ingenious/ii_20th_century_1971_1999.htm

www.britsattheirbest.com/ingenious/ii_21st_century.htm

AdventuresWithVoles

Has anyone else noticed that American cars are reverse Tardises? Bigger on the outside than they are on the inside.

Absolutely. DW and I went to New York and took a yellow cab to our hotel. We rode in a Ford Crown Victoria, a common saloon and probably about as long as a Jaguar XJ.

But there was no leg room in the back - we had to sit sideways - and the cabbie barely got the two cases in the boot. I suspect most of the internal space is taken up by a mahoosive fuel tank necessary for the 4 mpg said vehicle probably got.

Christ knows what gargantuan-sized Yanks do. Buy Toyotas, I suppose.

Stove top kettle like this.
Or nuke 8oz in microwave for almost 3 minutes to get boiling water.
The cultural difference is how much income ordinary households had to spend on "time-saving" gadgets & technology. Brits had much less, for decades.

Go back to 1850 & British households were decidedly ahead, I should think.

I grew up in the arse end of nowhere and was born in 1981.

We didnt have a dishwasher, mcrowave, sky growing up. Tbh though we dont have SKY now as adults (though my parents do) and we dont have a dishwasher either (though my parents do).

We always were strangely up to date with computers, spectrums, commodores and ataris etc.

We didnt eat pasta - I doubt my parents have ever made a pasta dish to this day my kids would starve without pasta

My dad had a carphone - it was v exciting but only worked on the top of one hill within 60 miles

Nobody ate chinese or Indian etc when I was growing up but then I lived in a pretty much exclusively 'white' town. Pizza was about as exciting as it got.

We didnt have a Maccy D or a pizza hut of a KFC and in fact, I learnt the 'Mcdonalds, mcdonalds, kentucky fried chicken and a pizza hut' song at Brownies and none of knew what any of them were!

I was born in 1971 and don't remember a time when we didn't have a washing machine or tumble dryer. I remember getting our first microwave - it was bolldy enormous!

My dad was a bit of a techy geek and we had home computers early - ZX80, BBC Micro, Atari, etc. We also had one of those remote controls that were attached to the tv with a lead!

I remember he got satellite tv (BkyB??) in about 1990 as I was at Uni and spent ALL my holidays watching tv (MTV, first episodes of Simpsons) rather than revising/working

I think the US used to be ahead of Europe until about the 80s. Now it's the other way around. I'm living in the US right now and shocked at the state of the infrastructure, the banking, the health insurance (not just the system which is a whole other thread but how unsophisticated it is - someone takes your insurance card, photocopies it and then faxes it to the insurance company!), the plumbing, the electrical wiring - it all seems so primitive compared with the UK!

I was born in the 1971 and we always had a washing machine, dishwasher and tumble drier. We certainly had a microwave by the late 70's and my favourite food from a tiny child was spaghetti Bolognaise. We were way behind on technical gadgets though. We must have been the only family with a betamax video recorder and my parents still don't have sky.

dreamingbohemian "Is it true that you didn't really eat pasta in the UK until the 1970s or something?"

Actually, pasta was introduced to Britain by the Romans and was soon a staple food. It became a bit gentrified by the late Tudors, not eaten by the commoners, and by Victorian times had probably been forgotten by the masses (who ate bread and potatoes).

I asked soemone today if he was happy using a computer - his reply was not really he had only just got used to the light switch It made me smile