Comparative technological creativity in Britain and America at the end of the nineteenth century: The Antipodean experience

At the end of the 19th century America replaced Britain as the world s leading economic power, a transition most typically expressed in terms of income per capita. By the end of the 19th century, America had become the technological leader of the world, the source of both more inventive input and output than anywhere else, even the once pre-eminent Britain. Colonial Australia used American and British patenting between 1882 and 1904 to gauge relative movements in each nation s inventive efforts in this crucial period at the turn of the century. Econometric analysis of this data, in turn, enables some observations about the determinants of the Anglo-American inventive gap to be made. The main findings have provided quantitative support for much of the conventional thinking about Anglo-American technological creativity in this period.