They invented Germany, that was a pretty big deal
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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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"
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Name something the Germans didn't invent.
concentration camps
But they were the first to have a bakery attached.
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Humor
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Schadenfreude. I mean they probably didn't invent the feeling but I can give them credit for it along with the word.
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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.
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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
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Health insurance. Little known fact but it was actually invented not just before Google but before the entire internet.
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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.
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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!
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Socks in Sandals
The no card payment sign.
Gorilla Glass (the super strong glass used in most cell phone screens) was invented by East Germany after the war, before the wall fell.
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.
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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.
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Since folks have left me the easy ones, a fair number of things ending in "wurst," like Weißwurst.
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Zyklon B, E605
TV and TV propaganda
The Haber process.
Automatic Transmission
Flammable "Fertilizer."
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