Misallocated Credit

A common AntiPattern in math, science, and technology is that the person best known for a discovery or invention is often not the first person who made the discovery or invention. Instead, the person who popularized the discovery or made the invention more practical often gets the credit.

Examples:

• The MandelbrotSet was discovered and investigated by Brooks and Matelski much earlier, but Benoit Mandelbrot was the first person to use a computer to display the set graphically. It was the ability to see the set that led to all the popular interest in it, and as a result, Mandelbrot gets most of the credit.
• CurryingSchonfinkelling
• Edison didn't invent the lightbulb, the Wright brothers didn't discover powered flight, Ford didn't invent assembly lines, (Marconi didn't invent radio; his patents were later recognized as violating Tesla's.) etc.
  • Edison didn't invent the incandescent LightBulb, but he did patent it. Same thing. :-)
    • Except that H. Woodward had an earlier US Patent (see http://home.frognet.net/~ejcov/evans.html), and, with M. Evans, an earlier Canadian patent. Also, J. W. Swan had acquired a British patent; see http://www.willitsell.com/edisnmth.htm.
  • Above is patently untrue, citing as my authority http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbulb
    • What exactly was untrue? BTW the first patent for an incandescent bulb was granted in 1841 to British scientist Frederick de Moleyns. However, soot blackened the glass too quickly for his bulb to be of practical use. In 1820, a design using a platinum coil in a vacuum was shown to work, but was expensive. See http://lightbulb.biography.ms/.
    • Anyone citing wikipedia as an authority is potentially on shaky ground, of course.