Sunday, October 2, 2011

American Cool - Invented in the United States

Before I digress I wanted to preface this blog entry by saying that the United States is a melting pot of immigrants and descendents of immigrants and is one of the things that makes this country so desirable to live. Whether your parents, grandparents or great grand parents came to America to seek their fortunes (and to provide better lives for their families)  from Europe, Asia, Russia, Ukraine, South America, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Africa, Japan, Taiwan, Pacific Islands, Middle East, (Did I leave out any country or continent? If I did, apologies are in order), ALL and I mean all made significant contributions to United States culture and made the US a better place to live over the years. Working hard to put your kids through school was and still is the mantra and access to an infrastructure of affordable and quality public and private education was and still is the main drawing card along with finding a good paying job in a city or state that provided a reasonable cost of living.

I think it's important now to call out and highlight some of the very cool things (people and inventions) that were invented in the US and has become the calling card for the US globally as everyone around the world picked up on these cool things that came from the US. Further validation of cool items on this list is that Japanese are collecting these vintage items from the US in great quantities (Like vintage US electric and acoustic guitars and vintage automobiles). Lots of Japanese collectors like to acquire cool stuff from the US. The rarer, the better.

The Electric Guitar - Les Paul and Leo Fender are the US inventors who came up with the electric guitar and I think Rock and Roll never would have broken out if it had not been for these two ingenius inventors.

Levis's Blue Jeans - Hipster, Cowboy, Teen, Yuppie, Punk,.....and the genre goes on and on. You name the style or fashion period and you know that Levis' Blue Jeans were popular in virtually every era. The design and material spec has not changed for more than 100 years, and for a good reason. This was a jean that was copied and imitated by thousands of other clothing manufacturers but there is only one original Levis Blue Jeans.

57 Chevrolet Nomad Station Wagon - This iconic automobile is synonomous with surfing and the 60's teen era. The tail-fin styling is classic and timeless and more of these cars were souped up as hot rods and custom rides because everyone knew a really cool car when they saw it. The 57 Chevy Nomad fit that description perfectly.

Elvis Presley

James Dean

Motown

Jazz

Bob Dylan

The Personal Computer

Apple Computer and the Macintosh

The First Router

Adobe PostScript

The first L.E.D. Lightbulb - Cree Research

If there's more cool stuff (people and inventions) that you strongly feel deserves to be on this list, please write post a comment with your suggestion and a brief reason why you think it deserves to be on the list.



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