There are some things that we think of as definitely, uniquely all-American – from apple pie to powered flight, baseball to denim - but how American are they really? Here, we reveal five surprising ‘US’ things that were actually invented by Brits in the United Kingdom.
Five inventions that are actually British
Baseball
Baseball may have its World Series but it’s an all-American affair. Unlike its roots. While many credit war hero Abner Doubleday as inventing the rules in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839, it’s thought that baseball’s origins lie much earlier with stick-and-ball games including cricket and rounders.
In 2008, local historians in England discovered documentary evidence that baseball was played in Surrey in 1755, more than 20 years before American Independence. There was even a historical reference to the game being played in England in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey – which was written between 1797 and 1798.
The lightbulb
While Thomas Edison is widely credited with inventing the lightbulb, arguably the American was the first to create it as a commercial product. Instead, it’s Britain’s Joseph Swan who first demonstrated a working incandescent lightbulb using a carbon filament on 3 February 1879 – several months ahead of the American.
Edison held the patent in the US, while Swan held it in the UK. They formed the Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company in 1883 to prevent expensive litigation cases on both sides.
Watch the film The Current War, about Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse's dramatic rivalry – and race – to light up America and power the world
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Skyscrapers
Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, New York Times Building… America is synonymous with skyscrapers. But, according to ICE, the UK’s Institute of Civil Engineers, Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings in England is the “grandfather of skyscrapers”.
Opened in 1797, the five-story building was the first iron-framed building in the world and so laid the structural foundations to build ever higher. In 2025, the highest skyscraper in the UK is The Shard (310m) compared to the One World Trade Centre (546m) in New York City.
Apple pie
A November 2022 YouGov poll of 1,000 adults across the US revealed that apple pie is one of the most popular pies served on Thanksgiving Day, finishing with 82% of the vote ahead of pumpkin pie (70%) in second. An American treat on a very American day, if only for the fact that it actually dates back to at least 14th century England with a recipe printed by none other than the author Geoffrey Chaucer.
Delicious British pies to try
US national anthem
‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is the national anthem of the United States, the lyrics deriving from the ‘Defence of Fort M’Henry’, a poem written by American lawyer Francis Scott Key in 1814. But the tune drifted over the Atlantic as it was written by Gloucestershire-born John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society in the 1780s, which boasted among its membership the writer Samuel Johnson.
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