> One Navy training manual of 1951 explained magnetic amplifiers in detail -- although with a defensive attitude about their history: "Many engineers are under the impression that the Germans invented the magnetic amplifier; actually it is an American invention. The Germans simply took our comparatively crude device, improved the efficiency and response time, reduced weight and bulk, broadened its field of application, and handed it back to us."

Does that sound "defensive" to everyone?

I don't know this area of engineering, so, to my ear, this could also plausibly be an almost admiring acknowledgement of someone else succeeding where you'd failed, combined (non-defensively) with confidence, because you had the strength or other superior merit to take it from them?