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The Best Belgian Inventions

02:36 02/04/2014

 Question: what do the following have in common? The Mercator projection, the saxophone, the birth control pill and the incandescent lamp.

Answer: they were all invented by Belgians. Also, they were all on the long-list of DBBU, a Radio 1 poll to find the best Belgian invention. The list ran to 36 items – among them the stock exchange, the chemical known as soda, the internet, the plaster cast, the roll-on deodorant and oil paint.

Some of the claims are surprising: wasn’t it Thomas Edison who invented the incandescent lamp? Wasn’t the World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee?

Well, no and sort of. Marcellin Jobard from France, naturalised when Belgium became independent, developed such a lamp in Brussels in 1838, a full 41 years before Edison, although Edison’s version was more successful. And Berners-Lee invented the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) which allowed two computers to communicate effectively. Fleming Robert Cailliau worked with Berners-Lee on the same project, so he gets to share the honours.

Some of them are, however, disputable. Although Belgium likes to credit Flemish Primitive Jan Van Eyck with “inventing” oil painting, art historians are a bit more discerning. Although Van Eyck was a pioneer not just in the mixing of various substances to get what he wanted, he also used it better than most of his contemporaries, who were mixing together substances of their own.

No doubts whatsoever, though, about Adolphe Sax inventing the saxophone. The saxophone came along in 1840, and it’s fair to say it changed music forever, whether your passion is marching bands, Charlie Parker or the bit at the beginning of Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”. This year marks the bicentenary of Sax’s birth, and there’s an exhibition taking place at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels all year long.

Now Radio 1 has whittled it down to five, and the public are invited to vote for the leading contenders. But hurry: The Best Belgian Invention will be announced on 4 April.

www.tinyurl.com/radio1inventions

 

Written by Alan Hope