Episode 4:
I met Jean-Pierre and Odile again yesterday. He was going on again about
the superiority of French technology and engineering, one of his favorite
subjects. Like, for example, the French atomic bomb, which he says is better
than the American one, why I'm not sure. Anyway, he was talking about inventions
again.
"Everyone knows that moving pictures were invented by a couple of Frenchmen,
the Lumière brothers. But it's not so well known that a couple more
of your supposedly American inventions were actually French too.
"The electric light bulb, it wasn't your Mr. Edison, and the telephone,
it wasn't your Mr. Bell. They were clever men, to be sure. But they weren't
the first. If it weren't for the impossible beaurocracy and inefficiency
of the French Patent Office, the real inventors would be famous. But they
remain unknown because Edison and Bell got the patents."
Sure. I suppose he's going to tell me next that the Apollo rocket systems
that sent those guys to the moon were actually secretly designed and built
by French subcontractors.
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