British V-2 - How the UK Almost Won the Space Race
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- The Space Race was almost a three-way race in the late 1940s when British designers created Megaroc from the earlier German V-2, the first craft capable of carrying a man into space. Find out the full story of how Britain almost won the Space Race and why the Megaroc rocket never left the ground.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers 'Zero Night' and 'Castle of the Eagles', both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: en.wikipedia.o...
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I didn't realise that "Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out" was a documentary film
Lol, your right.
It was all about cheese
We all like a bit of cheese on our biscut.
Haha nostalgia
Not quite Wensleydale, but cracking none the less
Keep it below 3G otherwise the tea would spill!
Mmmmmhhhmmm very british
It would have been pretty funny to see the USA and USSR try to be the first in the space race and then have Britain swoop in and gets the first man into space.
Flo Ris well, Britain did beat them to the jet age with the Comet
The Mercury program ran from 1958-1963 and Gagarin flew in April 1961 so if the Magaron project had run the British would have been in space before 1950?
Wasn't the He-178 the first operational turbojet? And the Me-262 the first operational jet fighter?
You can say that the british had the first operational commercial jet airliner, but they certainly didnt beat the germans to the jet age.
AND invent the Jet Engine itself, AND build programmable electronic computers before them
Nazi Germany was the first nation into space in modern times.
“Ministry of Supply” can be translated as “Ministry of Non-Supply”
I’d like to propose that we resurrect this project and increase the carrying capacity to take the entire U.K. parliament 😡
I B screw it lets just send all of Britain to space.
We can even still call it Brexit
Without a means of re entry though
Just think how much the amount of hot air that parliament currently produces would aid lift off!
@@Kettenhund31 That little toad, Ian Blackford alone, of the snp could propel the rocket up into orbit on his own.
Please make room for around a dozen US congressmen and one ex-president.
Great video Mark I’ve never heard of this space program.
If Patreon had existed in those days we'd have been up there...🚀🇬🇧🙌🏼🌍😂
Meanwhile, the U.K. was scrapping their warships just as fast as they could.
Pity.
They had to, resources were incredibly scarce after the war
How Britain Almost Made An Empire In Space
Granny Chan Britannia rules space
Arthur C Clarke and Patrick Moore were also members of the British Interplanetary Society.
Megaroc sounds like a good name for a dinosaur. Still, I do wish that Britain hadn't abandoned/cancelled her space program.
There's a huge difference between putting a man into space and putting one into orbit. Space, depending on who you talk to, officially begins at an altitude of 80 or 100 km. So if you fired a human straight up above these you have "put a human in space", but they will come straight back down again. To put a human in orbit requires accelerating a capsule into space (to avoid the vestiges of the atmosphere, typically at least 200 km up) and give it a tangential velocity of 6.9-7.8 km/s (24,840-28,080 km/h or 14,430-17,450 mph). That's why you see rockets start to curve away soon after launch. They're already trying to pick up horizontal velocity as well as altitude.
Apart from a "first" I there doesn't seem much point in just putting a man into space to immediately return. Note the Soviets and U.S. didn't do it, although the first manned U.S. space flight was a long suborbital one. Given Britain's cash-strapped post-war status, to concentrate on aviation and nuclear technology was probably a wise decision. It was just unfortunate that they didn't have more money and political will to pursue some extremely promising aerospace possibilities though.
Rationing, introduced during WW2, did not end officially in UK until 1954! (Apparently it was more restrictive after hostilities had ended). It would have been a brave politician who could justify the hideous cost of a "space project" for the amusement of a few "Oxbridge boffins" when the population was expected to go without indefinitely!
Different times, different priorities.
Another terrific, unknown story, masterfully told. Mark, I love your channel. Please keep up the great work. Greetings from Austin, Texas.
Thanks for the information, Mark. I have read that the post-war Labour governments spent a lot of their time killing a whole bunch of exciting R&D projects in aviation, but I didn't know about megaroc.
Amazing how influential the v2 rocket was.
For safety purposes no Lucas Electrics were used in Megaroc. :)
A launch facility was actually built in the 50s on the Isle Of Wight called High Down. You can even visit it today and was only used to do test launches of missiles back in the day, but it is likely this is where the Megaroc would have launched from had they built it. A missed opportunity for sure. Although, in latter days there has been some talk about resurrecting the site. Will it ever happen? I couldn't say...
Maybe one day?
Megaroc could have been first to sub-orbital space, but it was a developmental dead end. It would never have been able to achieve orbit with even a Sputnik sized payload. Both the Americans and Russians recognized this and stopped playing with V2s and developed better engines and vehicles that were much more effective.
Over the years the UK did fund various space projects in fits and starts, launching several payloads in the 60s. and even developing a launcher, the "Black Arrow". But it was never a priority to either Labor or Conservative parties, because they are dominated by "old money" that was determined to deindustrialize and be a service and finance economy. They had no interest in "bold new frontiers".
Thanks for the video, I knew the British had several captured V2. But never knew they were so far ahead of everybody in the space race.
Really enjoy these video genres, and do not want to denigrate England's effort in rocketry design or aerospace but this video makes several assumptions by not adequately exploring what was going on in American Rocketry at this time and by simply accepting that by '51 England could have launched a manned flight, just because someone said they could. I can attest that in Rocket science the devil is in the details. America was focusing on military ballistic ground to ground rockets at the time and thus was not looking at fielding any manned systems in the late 40's or early 50's. Having said that my late Father who was an Engineer at Redstone Arsenal with Von Braun and the boys told me several times that even though Von Braun was told to not spend time on manned design that by the mid 50's they always had one Redstone rocket they kept ("out back") away from prying eyes that was ready to roll if he was told to a launch a man. So it was really just a matter of political direction. Even though England was a great ally, had they seriously started a rocket program leading to a manned or orbital satellite flight I am quite sure America would have changed course to beat them. Also regarding Sputnik, my father told me pretty much the exact same story regarding having a Redstone ready to launch a satellite before Oct. of '57 when Russia put sputnik into its elliptical orbit but for some political/geopolitical reason Ike didn't want to put one up first (a PhD. Engineer who works for a large American defense contractor.
Not to mention, he said the Megaroc rocket engine would be throttlable... A very, very difficult task. The difference between saying on paper that you will have a throttlable large rocket engine, and actually building one that works, is huge. There are so many flow and acoustic properties that glitch badly when trying to throttle, and it took many years to get a big one working. To the best of my memory, the first one to actually fly and work was on the Apollo LEM.
Everyone talks about Sputnik in 1957, but how about Von Braun and his team languishing in the Untied States for 11 years without a clear-cut goal? Forget a satellite, Von Braun & Co. could have had a man in space by the early 50's if given the green light.
100% correct, but with the 50s tech we would've never gotten him home. If you listen to the description of this spacecraft it never would have worked either for the purposes of return. Quite honestly I'm not sure how they thought it would enter space by lowering thrust halfway through the journey, the Saturn V broke away larger sections and used the lighter weight to speed ahead even faster. Assuming it gets there, the capsule in the nose cone had no heat shield, the pilot inside had only a rudimentary space suit, less competent parachutes, and no retrorockets for re-orientation. He would have re-entered the atmosphere, then spun out and burned up before hitting the ground hard. Everyone with access to Van Braun's V2s had the ability to start walking towards space travel, but it took an extra decade of experimentation in space before we even had a clear idea of the technology required to keep a man alive up there.
Note that there is a difference between space and orbit. While Britain’s achievement of sending a man to space years ahead would be truly remarkable, there was still a lot to develop in order to build a rocket large enough to achieve the high velocities needed for an orbit.
How great would it have been if Benny Hill was the 1st man in space, with his theme song playing in the background as it was broadcast live.
To defend the decision not to go ahead, it’s worth pointing out that Britain was paying off the massive financial debt to the USA. The last payment was not made until 31 Dec. 2006. So in that way, maybe we did contribute indirectly to NASA.
Warren Ellis did an alternate history comic where Britain beat both superpowers to space, The Ministry of Space.
We also designed a crazy rocket to land on the moon in the 1930’s!
GERMANY FICK JAA
Jules Verne had one one in the 1870s. Design and build are two very different things.
JXSHXA
British scientists continued to play a key role in the development of satellites. The US offered massive opportunities for advanced minds, and scientists from the UK were among those who joined Nasa and became integral to its success. Francis Thomas Bacon, for example, developed the fuel cells used on Apollo 11, and was later lauded by Richard Nixon. According to space lore, the President put his arm around the Englishman's shoulders and told him: "Without you, Tom, we wouldn't have gotten to the Moon."
Did they blast a penalty kick so far off target that it ended up in space?
That's just England!
... the rest of Britain wouldn't even get that far in the tournament
I think Sir Humphrey convinced Jim Hacker this wasn't a good idea.
Ah well, we definitely won the race for the shittest rocket name imaginable!
It sounds like one of the Transformer robots 😛
Remember kids. There's another timeline where the empire never fell, we fully adopted the EM-2 rifle and defeated the dastardly Mekon.
Don't forget Quatermass! "Can you hear me Major Tommy?"
Right, your content is much better for consumption than watching 24 hour politicians !
Eric "Winkle" Brown, the first man in space :-)
Curious Droid has also done a very good video on British space flight -- that one was a craft that could put commercial and scientific payloads into orbit. It was a bit later than this time, but Curious Droid's video strongly suggested the US put the 'kibosh' on it. The sad fact is that Britain became permanently in financial debt to the US as a result of US 'help' in World War II. It's now painfully obvious that one of the conditions of that debt repayment is to unquestioningly carry out all US Directives.
Well today I will skip the coffee and have some tea.
But we realised early on the problems associated with drinking tea in zero gravity . Once we'd come to this understanding it obviously precluded further investment in the project .
There is absolutely no doubt that the British designers were brilliant. My quibble with this video is that designs and drawings are only part of the equation. Political will is required, something that as noted was lacking in the UK at that time. The Soviet political will peaked in the late 50s/early 60s while the American political will peaked in the early/mid 60s. What we learned in the recent 50 year Apollo retrospective is that it took the individual will and leadership - not to mention funding based on political will - to pursue a significant program from drawing board to success.
It is easy to personify and glorify the individual human effort and inventiveness of “rocket scientists”. It’s more mundane to acknowledge the contribution of, say, seamstresses at the Playtex company who created the space suits that kept the astronauts alive on the web. It took 400,000 human brains and hands to “put a man on the moon”, yet we only remember some of the names of the few people who actually stepped on the moon.
It’s a tantalizing thought (especially if you’re from the UK as I would guess Mr. Felton is) that the UK could have been first in the space race. He points a finger at the UK government for denying their scientists the opportunity to make that achievement. But as it turned out, it took far more than just smart scientists and some politicians to create a monumental achievement like a space program. The Americans pulled off the combined set of ingredients, especially the unheralded ones - the ingredients that didn’t require rocket scientists. I would just like to add this perspective to the “rocket science” emphasis of this video.
Sounds a bit like when the Canadian government scrapped the state of the art Arrow jet fighter program. Such a lost opportunity. That would make an interesting video.
"What took you chaps so bloody long?" 🌘🚀🇬🇧
Extremely interesting. My favorite military youtube channel!
My techno-nerd correction.....claim is the original acceleration was 9.8 meters/second ( 4:26 - 4:30). Meters-per-second is "velocity"...not "acceleration". I'm sure you meant 9.8 meters-per-second-per-second ( that is...9.8 meters per second "squared"). A change of velocity of 9.8m/s.....occurring every second... and close to 1G. Same with a later claim of reaching 20 m/s or close to 3g's , in the vid.
Nerd alarm activated! ;-)
Also, doing the rocket research, the Brits would have found out early on about the Comet design flaw.
Almost sounds like a documentary of the comic " Ministry of Space".
Wow. Anyone who went up in this would have been brave.....
Imagine if Cecil Rhodes was still alive when this was possible, he once said: 'all of these stars ... these vast worlds that remain out of reach. If I could, I would annex other planets'
Then seeing that a railway across Africa isn't enough he builds one across the stars
You can't just change dimensions of the V2 rocket at will - the size and shape of the V2 was very precisely determined to match its speed and acceleration so that air flows smoothly around every part of the rocket. A small turbulence around the outer skin or the fins would tear it apart instantly. Thats why the V2 has that massive, beefy shape and not slim like a pencil, contrary to what amateurs would "design".
I would really want to see the Brits bringing some tea to space (if they had won)
Damn just scrolling down and you beat me to the punch :)
To be fair Gagarin went for orbit... Now Mercury redstone is a completely different story. The redstone rocket _is_ v2 derived
Great story, shameful UK ending, awesome video.
Just imagine...the first man in space could've been George Formby.
But how do you make a cup of tea once you're up there ? , that'd be the greatest of all the engineering challenges .
Love you Brits but the first operating programmable digital computer was ENIAC developed by Presper Eckert and John Machuly for the US Army.
Zuse developed and built the Z series computers from 1936 to 41. Unfortunately they were destroyed by allied bombing raids. The Mark 1 also predates Eniac
Err, wouldn't it be a high altitude pressure suit not a g-suit?
No.
Archibald low
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Low
In 1917 Low and his team also invented the first electrically steered rocket (the world's first wireless, or wire-guided rocket), almost an exact counterpart of the one used by the Germans in 1942 against merchant shipping. Low's inventions during the war were to a large extent before their time and hence were under-appreciated by the Government of the day, although the Germans were well aware of how dangerous his inventions might be.[citation needed] In 1915 two attempts were made to assassinate him; the first involved shots being fired through his laboratory window in Paul Street; the second attempt was from a visitor with a German accent who came to Low's office and offered him a cigarette, which upon analysis contained enough strychnine chloride to kill.
During World War II the Germans also made good use of Low's 1918 rocket guidance system and used it as one of the foundations for their V projects. So yet again Low was leading the way, only this time the wrong people followed.
Können Sie empfehlen Medikamente für Furz und Durchfall?
Then the USSR said cyka blyat and launched a man into space with a tin can full of fuel
Great video mark. It's too bad the British space program was cancelled.
The British invented "the computer"? That's highly debatable. As with many inventions of modern times, Turing's work is a refinement of previous works that could also quite rightly be called computer, and it's not clear where the cut-off point for not doing so is. There is no single inventor of the computer, just many people who over the years have contributed to it with a critical new idea. Konrad Zuse's work on computers, to take an obvious example, preceded that of Turing's, just that his computer was electromechanical, and not electronic circuit based. But then so again Charles Babbage was far earlier than both, and his programmable differential machine could also be called an early computer.
In the counterfactual comic book series "Ministry of Space" the UK does become the preeminent in space. The inflection point is that on the collapse of Germany British Commando intelligence teams (the real guys that James Bond was based on) concentrated on grabbing the Nazi rocket scientists and also stumbled on all the gold that the Germans had looted, giving the Brits a technological head start over the US and Russians and also a means to afford it.
The first real computer was invented by Konrad Zuse
I find the British claim to space in this video to be quite fantastic. Perhaps to be renamed 'the First Dead Man in Outerspace'.
Wow - I'd never heard of this before! Marvellous stuff.
Please note this was not a new or original design continuation of the original German V2 (A4) Rocket program! The Germans with Dr Von Braun , had already developed and designed a (Piloted) and (Winged) version of their V2 Rocket System (A4b) , along with the enlarged two stage versions (A9-A12) That could hit New York City from Germany. They also had the (Orbital) Manned (Sanger) space bomber on the drawing board , but the War ended before mass production could start. Looks like the Brits got hold of the original German Blue prints at the end of the War!
Great video as always, however I want to make some input on the intro as far as inventions.
Britain did invent the first mechanical TV, but the first electric TV was invented in the United States as well, so that one comes down to debate over which counts as the true first TV. As for the world wide web, it was a British scientist, but he was working in Sweden (Fun fact he created the the web on a NeXt Computer).
The first computer (albeit without commands) was indeed British however, and they would also bring the first electrical computer as well.
Great content and keep up the great work!
Ian Flemming's Bond novel Moon Raker was based on this.
I love these feltons, but always a question... for this one, WTF?? No heat shield for the Brit? Not high enough, or different re-entry angle? C'mon...
Gagarin went to orbit, the UK would not have "done the same 10 years earlier". The energy release of a rocket that goes to orbit is 10 times the energy release of the sort of suborbital hops Megaroc could have done.
Reading the title i thought this was monty python.
If they had added two Banwell catherine wheels and some sparklers we could have made the Moon! However, every Brit knows that Joseph Cavor was the first there in 1899 using a cavorite powered sphere. 😉
Wow... actually no argument in the comments that the British didn't invent the first computer. Some people claim it's the Germans with the Zuse, some say the Hungarians, the burger inhaling yanks think they invented it and everything. The thing is, it really doesn't matter since one invention is build upon another - one breakthrough discovery supports another. It has always been like that and always will be.
Also, the British definitely did not invent the first computer. That's all. Thanks.
The United Kingdom: We created the internet.
DARPA: Am I a joke to you.
I come to think of Benny Hills "Mr Scuttle"!
Afaik the germans built the Z3 PC earlier than the british built the colossus computer
There's dispute over that and frankly it depends what you regard as a 'computer', it was definitely one of the first if not the first
Also the guy behind it, Alan Turing was kinda a big deal haha
Charles Babbage was first
@@Sol_Invictus_ true and he and his creation definitely deserve more attention, but his was (while magnificent) mechanical not electronic, and could only really perform one function so wasn't programmable and only by manual human control and supervision so couldn't be left to do anything by itself (although don't get me wrong it did perform that function, adding up and other basic mathematics even on a vast, precise scale very well, was and is an amazing device and was most definitely the first man-made device of any sort to do so, with the possible exception of that Ancient Greek thing archaeologists found)
@@Sol_Invictus_ even were what I just said not true and he WAS first though, well that proves it just with a different name then as he was most definitely British
Well actually the World Wide Web was a co-operation with America, and the first working TV set was created by a Scottish Inventor named John Logie Baird
Interesting What If moment in history. I am very doubtful that it would set off. Although very ambitious, the U.K was just coming out after WW2 and was pretty much broke after the victory. Alot of technical difficulties would present themselves, tons of money is required for a certain amount of time, and it is very risky to send human pilots to test the rocket.
the project also lacked a pratical application, sure they could send someone to space on a balistic trajectory but what use is that. The first satillites were developed to show off their capabilities as ICBMs
Well while we certainly were lacking in money we weren't lacking in courage or inventiveness, hell if it HAD happened it would've most likely been veteran RAF pilots from the war as the first astronauts
While this is interesting and would have been awesome if it happened, comparing it to Yuri Gagarins flight is a bit misleading. The difference in technology required for reaching orbit rather than a suborbital trajectory is huge. A much larger rocket with several stages is needed, not a small feat in the 1940s and 50s.
It's a bit misleading to claim the capsule "didn't need" a reentry shield and the parachute would work "regardless of velocity". The capsule would never reach orbit nor anything like orbital velocity. The project would have been about as useful as Virgin Galactic: space tourism with no capability to achieve, maintain a stable orbit nor learn about zero-gravity conditions for more than a few minutes at a time.
If they succeeded, 1st act on space would have been a worm cup of tea
To be fair: the US could have done it too, they not just had V2s but Wernher von Braun himself.
@Gar Nah he became a citizen, he was as American as Apple Pie when we left the Earth to go to the moon.
Key word....... ALMOST!!
And, as I recall, the UK was still rationing food and would do so until 1954. (Can John Bull eat a rocket!? Surely not!)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom
I don't know where Mark gets all this stuff from. Yet another thing I new nothing about..... until today!
Great video, always something new to learn from you, but the computer is a german invention by Conrad Zuse in May 1941 and not british.
Truly tragic that the U.S. space program was not a joint venture with our closest friends, the Brits. Perhaps if Churchill had remained PM after the war...
You can see why Atomic weapons would have been the priority at the time with limited financial resources
Key word, almost
46 km altitude, that's less than half needed to get into space.
"Sweet Dreams are made of this"!
The heat shield where is it
Fascinating at the very least. Many thanks.
It's not about which country had a plan or did it first, it's about humanity and technological evolution.
Comparing the R7 that put Yuri Gegaren in orbit to this is unfair, while this undoubtedly ahead of its time there is a massive difference between the ballistic trajectory that this would have been capable of is far far easier than the orbital spacecraft of the mercury program and whatever the soviet equivalent was called.
Great video! I hadn't heard of this rocket!
Spelling error in starting title, great video but I just thought I’d pick it out
I thought TV was invented in Rigby, Idaho.
*DOMINION OF MOON*
it's a shame but at least we weren't like countries such as India, ploughing millions in to a space program whilst plentiful of our citisens lived in utter poverty. Better to have looked after our own people than waste it on a space program, despite how great it would've been (Especially when all of the technology was lying there waiting to be put in to practice!). Plus, we did begin designing the fastest commercial jet ever to grace this planet at around that time also so it's not all bad news!
Could have .... that must be a new branch in History. Even Switzerland tried to launch rockets in space. But as always ... the dreams were always bigger than the purse.
Konrad Zuse invented the computer
Ra Va Turing came up with what is regarded as the modern day computer. If you want to be pedantic, there's been 'computers' of one type or another for centuries. Why not just say Babbage invented the first computer back in the 1800s? It may have been mechanical but it was still a computer.
See Charles Babbage
Sorry rain on your parade, but the British did not “invent” television, although John Logie Baird did build one of the first working televisions. Russian Boris Rosing and Vladimir K. Zworykin, French Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier, and German Paul Nipkov did most of the inventing of television before him. Also, Germany’s Konrad Suze, build the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Z3.
Funny how when an Englishman invents something it is an English invention, and when a Scottish person does (John Logie Baird was Scottish) it is a British invention...
Maybe Interesting to make a clip on Zuse, Who had his patents confiscated after the war. He was a true pioneer and found little recognition, even in IT few people know about him.
On the worlds first digital and programmable computer
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)
Baird invented what today is television others before can not be defined as such. We invented Colossus & Manchester Baby which put together make what is a complete computer no other nation achieved this by this time.
Pieter Visser
Sorry to rain on your parade but
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
The difference between the less developed and the more developed nations is a function of time: the British started to save sooner than all other nations: they also started sooner to accumulate capital and to invest it in business. Because they started sooner, there was a higher standard of living in Great Britain when, in all other European countries, there was still a lower standard of living. Gradually, all the other nations began to study British conditions, and it was not difficult for them to discover the reason for Great Britain's wealth. So they began to imitate the methods of British business.
Since other nations started later, and since the British did not stop investing capital, there remained a large difference between conditions in England and conditions in those other countries. But something happened which caused the headstart of Great Britain to disappear.
What happened was the greatest event in the history of the nineteenth century, and this means not only in the history of an individual country. This great event was the development, in the nineteenth century, of foreign investment. In 1817, the great British economist Ricardo still took it for granted that capital could be invested only within the borders of a country. He took it for granted that capitalists would not try to invest abroad. But a few decades later, capital investment abroad began to play a most important role in world affairs.
Without capital investment it would have been necessary for nations less developed than Great Britain to start with the methods and the technology with which the British had started in the beginning and middle of the eighteenth century, and slowly, step by step - always far below the technological level of the British economy - try to imitate what the British had done.
It would have taken many, many decades for these countries to attain the standard of technological development which Great Britain had reached a hundred years or more before them. But the great event that helped all these countries was foreign investment.
Foreign investment meant that British capitalists invested British capital in other parts of the world. They first invested it in those European countries which, from the point of view of Great Britain, were short of capital and backward in their development. It is a well-known fact that the railroads of most European countries, and also of the United States, were built with the aid of British capital. You know that the same happened in this country, in Argentina.
The gas companies in all the cities of Europe were also British. In the mid 1870s, a British author and poet criticized his countrymen. He said, "The British have lost their old vigor and they have no longer any new ideas. They are no longer an important or leading nation in the world." To which Herbert Spencer, the great sociologist, answered, "Look at the European continent. All European capitals have light because a British gas company provides them with gas." This was, of course, in what seems to us the "remote" age of gas lighting. Further answering this British critic, Herbert Spencer added, "You say that the Germans are far ahead of Great Britain. But look at Germany. Even Berlin, the capital of the German Reich, the capital of Geist, would be in the dark if a British gas company had not invaded the country and lighted the streets."
In the same way, British capital developed the railroads and many branches of industry in the United States. And, of course, as long as a country imports capital its balance of trade is what the noneconomists call "unfavorable." That means that it has an excess of imports over exports. The reason for the "favorable balance of trade" of Great Britain was that the British factories sent many types of equipment to the United States, and this equipment was not paid for by anything other than shares of American corporations. This period in the history of the United States lasted, by and large, until the 1890s.
But when the United States, with the aid of British capital - and later with the aid of its own procapitalistic policies - developed its own economic system in an unprecedented way, the Americans began to buy back the capital stocks they had once sold to foreigners. Then the United States had a surplus of exports over imports. The difference was paid by the importation - by the repatriation, as one called it - of American common stock.
mises.org/library/foreign-capital-investment-antidote-global-inequality
Visser you're a fucking idiot; stop perpetuating a myth fuelled by some pathetic chippy attitude.