World's Most Valuable Companies

They also scrapped their dual listing, so would be fair to label them as only british.

Remember its the world's third largest country by population, and largest fully developed country by quite a margin (Japan and being about a third the population and Germany a little over a 4th). A lot of China's industry is state owned, or i'd expect to see far more than two companies on this list. By 2067 though, i'd expect perhaps more China as the People's Republic develops and shifts towards a more market based economy and certainly more India.

That's not entirely fair, though obviously the glory days are long gone. Problem is that many of the things that are invented by Brits don't get UK investment. The Dyson vacuum cleaner springs to mind. Successful British invention but James Dyson could only get initial investment from Japan. Then when production started in the UK it was using an American company I believe. Movies too (though not "inventions" exactly). Plenty of British properties, like Harry Potter, made into hugely successful films with largely British crew and cast, but the finance generally comes from the US so the profits go there.

Not invented anything in the 20th century. Tim Berners-Lee invented a wee thing that kinda took off......

Wait, in Switzerland, a British guy comes up with a web protocol to use the internet developed by the US Dept of Defense decades before. And this is a British invention? Because he was born there? Even if we spot you one, it's a pretty damn short list. Oh, the adapted vacuum cleaner. Clever, that. Still you guys call it Hoovering...

the television was made possible by several different inventions pioneered by several different inventors, most prominently 2 Americans, 1 Scotsman, and 1 Japanese guy.

The Internet was without question or legitimate controversy invented in the United States by Americans. Many decades later, after spreading to the entire world and after many hundreds of other innovations, some people in Switzerland invented hypertext links and a couple of other things that helped contribute to the commercialization of the thing that already existed and was in wide use. And there was a British guy working on the project. If Berners-Lee invented the Internet then Ray Kroc invented hamburgers. And if the nationality of one guy on staff confers credit for an invention to the country that guy is from, then... I guess Germany invented manned spaceflight? Actually, I have heard someone on this site make that claim before.

A useful clue when trying to figure out where something was invented: look at which territories don't require special identification or adaptation when adopting the technology or system.

For example, postage stamps from the UK are the only postage stamps in the world that don't list what country they are from on the stamp. Want to take a guess as to which country invented postage stamps?

Commercial websites in the UK always used to end in .co.uk. Just like in Russia it's .co.ru. In France it's .co.fr. In the US? Is and always has been just .com

Same way if you look at international calling codes. Code for the UK? +44. For Thailand? +66. Japan? +81. Tuvalu? +688. For the US and Canada? +1.

It’s always a winning bet to release anti-obesity medications into the US! Well… most of the western world, really.