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Comment by pacaro | Hacker News Reader

Banking in general and international banking, predate the US

London, Glasgow, Budapest and Paris all have metro systems that predate the New York Subway

There are multiple bridges that are still in use that predate European colonization of North America

While the oldest airport is in the US, (College Park), Hamburg, Bucharest, Bremen, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Sydney all follow very shortly after

AFAICT Skyscrapers is really the only example you give where the US canonically built the v1.0

I think that there are probably other reasons, my suspicion is primarily rent seeking

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I’m from Glasgow. Completely random fact ahead:

The underground in Glasgow was comprised of orange trains. They “ran like clockwork” and had the nickname “the clockwork orange”, which is where the Stanley Kubrick movie title came from. Allegedly.

Holy shit!

Never thought I'd get to know what Clockwork Orange actually means through a random comment on HN.

Except the comment is incorrect. The underground nickname came from the movie not vice versa.

Based on a quick search, that does not seem to be true. The title of the movie comes from the title of the book it is based on. The book's author has given some explanations for the origin of the title that do not involve Glasgow trains. [0] It seems the name for the subway comes from the movie. There also seems to be some dispute about the usage of that name for the Glasgow subway. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(novel)#Tit...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway#Nicknames

I have always been under the impression it is because the US wasn't bombed to bits during WWII and didn't basically get to re-think infrastructure.

Maybe now that its getting bombed to bits because of COVID, something good might end up happening?

I am not sure this is true, tho it sounds interesting.

Before WW2 there wasn't much infrastructure to begin with, the big highways have been built after.

The metro lines from before are still there and the bridges that were built before the war have just been rebuilt in the same places (i.e. were the roads arrived and the river was narrow).

Most of the big cities also still have medieval and older city centers, and we're still using roman-era routes for roads.

Based on things like the Chicago Fire and the SF Quake, it seems (at least anecdotally) clear that massive destruction has a positive effect on infrastructure down the road.

The Great Fire of London (CE 1666) did this for London too

In the case of banking you have to realize that US bank accounts here are often completely free, but they will charge you a penalty for anything and everything that is a result of action or inaction on your part (its always your fault). Everything is designed to maximize the chance of your making a mistake so they can charge you a fee.

>There are multiple bridges that are still in use that predate European colonization of North America

There are bridges in use that predate Christianity.

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