2w ago

Name something the Germans invented without googling

184 comments

They invented Germany, that was a pretty big deal
- Meh. Strongly derivative work, and they kept reinventing the wheel.
- They didn’t invent East Germany.

The hamburger, from the city of Hamburg.
- And German chocolate cake from Deutschschokoladenkuchen
  
  Fun fact: German Chocolate Cake is actually from Texas. Either the cocoa company or the baker (I can't remember which) was named "German" and I think the original name was "German's chocolate cake"
  
  And schadenfreude: the joy that comes from others suffering!
- Wasn’t the hamburger invented in the US? There they had Frikadellen, which are arguably much better.
  
  As far as the story goes, the meat-in-a-bun concept was taken by sailors from Hamburg to the USA, where it was tweaked for local preferences and then called a hamburger. So the Germans invented it, USA marketed it.

Name something the Germans didn't invent.
- concentration camps
  
  But they were the first to have a bakery attached.
  
  Nope. The Brits did that, in South Africa, iirc.
- Humor
- Hitler
  
  And what about Mozart?
- Civil engineering. And they've been confused at how the Italians beat them to it ever since
- Inefficiency
  
  Germans known inefficiency pretty damn well, I can tell you that much.
- Tough one
- Telephone
  
  Wrong
- Noodles.
- Airplanes.
  
  Germany actually did invent this. The brothers Wright only stuck an engine to it. The first glider that actually deserved its name was inveted by Otto Lilienthal. He died in it. Without his work, the Wright brothers would not have been able to build their plane.
- The number zero, sanitation, statistics.
- Beer
- Greggs sausage rolls. Or are we counting the Anglo-Saxons as ex-pats?

The bicycle
The car
The computer (arguably, with the Zuse Z3)
Spoiler: I'm German.
- Not the computer, but the first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer (which would be a stage in computer hardware.)
  It would be Babbage's machine as mechanical computers precede digital ones and only if we only allow nonspecific turing complete machines.
  
  It was the first programmable, fully automatic, digital, turing-complete computer (although they only found out the last part after Zuse died).
  So I'd argue, it was the first computer in the sense we understand and use the word today.
- They invented you

Schadenfreude. I mean they probably didn't invent the feeling but I can give them credit for it along with the word.
- " I also like hiraeth. It's a Welsh concept of longing for home."
  
  Weird way to spell "Heimweh"
- TIL that's a feeling and not just the TF2 laughing emote
  
  Its more than a feeling.

Everyone knows they invented the Haber-Bosch process. Pretty important shit.
- Don't get me started on the Haber process. My students will tell you that I can and will go on for half an hour about how it prolonged WW1 and is one of the first commercial processes to make use of Le Chateliers principle.
  Also, probably best not to spend too much time idolizing Fritz Haber, ~~as I'm pretty certain he went on to become a staunch supporter of Hitler.~~ edit: I mixed up Haber with someone else, but his research was foundational in developing many German chemical weapons, including Zyklon B
  Edit 2: probably Richard Kuhn who fell into line and fired Jewish coworkers at the direction of the Nazis or Herman Kolbe who was an outspoken German nationalist and anti-Semite. I use all three of them as examples of prominent scientists behaving badly in my O-Chem course.
  Really a fascinating bit of science history
  
  I recall that one of the men ended up shooting themselves or their wives did or something along those lines. It was the one that did his best to kill as many people with chemical weapons as he could.
  
  I’m pretty certain he went on to become a staunch supporter of Hitler
  The exact opposite is true.
- And Haber of Haber-Bosch fame also invented using poisonous gas as a weapon in WW1.

Health insurance. Little known fact but it was actually invented not just before Google but before the entire internet.
- Otto von Bismarck, 1883

The rotary engine, also known as the Wankel engine
- They also invented diesel fuel. Is the Wankel engine used anywhere now?
  
  There's some aviation and boating uses. Air pollution regulations have killed it for almost any automotive use.
  
  Yes. New Mazdas use one as a range extender. It's shitty.
  
  And the Diesel engine to use the fuel.
- In fact, I've got a Wankel engine in my pants right now.

Hard to say. There are soo many Germans, who knows what they’ve googled!

Those cool windows that Americans mistake for broken. I'm American and I want those windows... also a bidet.
- Just need to combine those windows with built-in bug nets and we're solid.
  
  I have several at home
- What windows are you talking about? I tried searching for it.

Communism
- Relatedly: the pension. (Before implementing the state pension, Bismarck probably saw nightmares that involved red and black banners.)

We invented the car
- The car, the bicycle and Spaghetti icecream are the three most notable inventions from Mannheim Germany.
  
  I'm from the US and never heard of spaghetti ice cream. I just googled it and it looks pretty delicious!
  
  alas, the fr*nch invented the bicycle, germans merely invented the dandyhorse.

Modern physics.
- Nuclear physics.

kindergarten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten
- Kindergarten is even a German word would translate to Kinder= Kids Garten= Yard? So Kidsyard... Was funny for me as a German to learn that it actually is named Kindergarten in English..

Socks in Sandals

The no card payment sign.

Diesel engine, Mustard gas, and Synthetic fertilizer.
- Depending om what you mean by "inventing synthetic fertilizer", couldn't the invention be either Norwegian (Birkeland-Eyde), German (Haber), or English (Thomas)?
  
  Haber, he is generally credited with creating the process. Also mustard gas.

Gorilla Glass (the super strong glass used in most cell phone screens) was invented by East Germany after the war, before the wall fell.
- Are you thinking of Superfest? Gorilla Glass is American and seems to predate Superfest.

Stable Diffusion
Those same folks went on to create FLUX.

I'm loving it.

The Berlin Wall, putting beach towels on recliners at the crack of dawn, sauerkraut, lederhosen, frankfurters, doner kebabs, hamburgers, donuts, cheese, iron gates, macerated cherries, aardvarks, the car, the bicycle, diesel, the moon, beer, lager, tamagotchi, the letter 'a', the number 25, serrated saw blades, cantilever bridges, ice cream, hand lotion, galoshes, the ipod, bilateral symmetry, the dawn, goths, the parachute, that sizzling noise meat makes when you fry it, hats, gloves, left socks, altitudes over 1,773 feet, postmodernism, and geese.
- Sauerkraut is way older then Germany. People have been fermenting food a long time.
  
  Especially when you consider Germany as a country is not really that old
- You forgot 'digging holes at beaches' and The Sound Of Music. For the rest you nailed it.
- The bicycle was, in its present from, was invented by a Brit.
- Made my day!

Gutenberg printing press
- The Chinese invented movable type printing presses ~500 years before Gutenberg. The process was refined in Korea after that and made its way west. Gutenberg likely adapted and popularized the existing processes into the western industrialization movement.
  
  That's why I specified the Gutenberg printing press, which is distinct from previous ones. I did not say they invented printing...
  
  Don't say that too loud, you shatter the western / white superiority complex. :<

The US Army. Given the history, you might expect it to based on either the French or British model, but no, they mostly took notes from Prussia.
You might also think it's a very top-down authoritarian model for a military, but also no. That notion mostly comes from the legacy of Nazis. Both before and after, the German model of the Army is one of the least top-down authoritarian militaries.
- This contradicts Der Hauptmann von Kõpenick

Since folks have left me the easy ones, a fair number of things ending in "wurst," like Weißwurst.
- Gelbwurst!

Rockets
- Wasn't that china?
  
  China invented fireworks around 1k years ago, but Germany made the first one that went to space (the V2, the same one they used to bomb a bunch of places in WWII), and scientists from Germany helped to develop rockets a lot further after Operation Paperclip

Zyklon B, E605

V2 rockets
- V1 rockets
  
  V0 rockets

TV and TV propaganda

SAP (maudits allemands !)

Automatic Transmission

Flammable "Fertilizer."

The Haber process.

The Zweihänder and Aldi
Ps: I DuckDuckGo’ed this

Gummy Bears.

Assault rifles
- Nope. There where several "assault rifles" designed and built long before the StGew44 or the AK47 showed up.
  The Italians even adopted one in the 1890s. But because Italian industry wasn't, let's just say not very capable at the time, only small numbers were produced. Even the Browning BAR, adopted in 1918, predates it and lasted far longer in service around the world.
  If there is one thing the Germans did give to the world was the Reinheitsgebot in 1516. Because beer should only be made from water, barley, and hops. For that alone, they stand tallest in history.
  
  Thanks for the interesting summary.
  It really is true what they say. Post something wrong, and soon enough someone will correct you. Maybe you could even think of this as a clever way of crafting an effective question.

hamburger
- Though named after Hamburg, it was an American invention.
  
  ok, so uh i guess germany invented volkswagen

Nowadays we invent things by describing the thing in Chatgibidy instead.
- Chatskibidi?

Walking around in general public in only Speedos.
- the use of towels as a territorial marker
  
  They draped one over the back of Poland that time.

Printed circuit boards. Printing press. Graph theory. Theory of relativity. Homeopathy.
- You could've really stopped at "relativity".
  
  Yes but I felt the need to include the evil/misguided minority of Germans, and I managed to do it without referencing certain 20th century events.
- Printing press as well as the linotype.
  If a German invented the Xerox they would've had the hat trick.
- well Einstein was swiss. If it's still a german invention then it depends how german the swiss are.

Zyklon B?

Fanta?

Jet engines?
- No I think the UK beat them by a few years but they had them in planes earlier.

everything that germany invented before google existed.
- German ingenuity really fell off after they were done with the warmongering

The automobile - pronounce it out loud, you'll say it something like "ow-toe moh-beel", i.e. in a German accent. Because Germans invented cars.
The assault rifle. They invented the concept, a handful of prototypes without the relevant doctrine (or for the 1890s one, even a detachable magazine) is irrelevant. Fight me, @bluewing.
- I think the otto & diesel cycles are a better claim than the automobile, given there are like 100 different competing "first automobiles" to chose from
  
  The Wankel engine is also a German invention. Though you could argue it's an improved Otto cycle. Also the inventor is problematic to say the least.

Diesel engine, Fischer-Tropsch, Homeopathy.

The blitzkrieg.
- Brought to you by Pervitin.
  
  They invented that too, BTW. Along with Heroin and MDMA.

Rigid (as in using a solid frame to keep shape instead of gas pressure) airships? Unless there's an earlier example of that than the ones Zeppelin made that I'm not thinking of

mp3
- facts

The vacuum pump?

Rage

The saxophone
- Sorry, Adolphe Sax was from Belgium

The woman that birthed Gutenberg

184 comments