Sinclair Executive: The world's first pocket calculator

But as America's power and influence grew, the traffic began to flow in the opposite direction.

And by the start of the 20th century it was powering down a six-lane highway.

In the space of a few years, America gave the world powered flight, mass production and the gramophone record.

Britain hit back with television, computers, radar and jet-powered flight.

Concorde

The UK then got carried away and invented, with the French, the world's first supersonic passenger aircraft.

Mini: failed to grab the US market

Unfortunately, no one, least of all the Americans, seemed interested in it - at least not interested enough to actually place an order.

Three US Airlines, TWA, Pan-Am and United, took out options on the Anglo-French plane in the 1960s, which was enough to prevent the programme from being cancelled.

But these never turned into firm orders and production ceased in 1979.

There was, briefly, a subsonic Concorde service between Washington DC and Dallas, operated by Braniff International, but by then the project, as a commercial entity, was dead in the water.

Now - nearly 40 years after the Concorde was first conceived - America's Boeing is planning its own supersonic passenger aircraft.

Its success is unlikely to hinge on the number British orders.

The pocket calculator

If the world wasn't ready for Concorde in the 1970s, it showed slightly more enthusiasm for another British invention.

The Beatles: honorary Americans?

In 1971 Clive Sinclair, then the boss of a tiny Cambridge hi-fi company, returned from a visit to Texas Instruments in America, armed with an new integrated circuit chip.

He used this revolutionary piece of circuitry to invent the world's first pocket calculator.

Up until that point, calculators had been clumsy, deskbound things, which relied on mains power.

Sinclair's stylish creation made him a wealthy man - even if the market for calculators was eventually cornered by the Americans and the Japanese.

He went on to pioneer home computers, with the ZX81 and Spectrum.

But Sir Clive will probably be remembered best for the Sinclair C5 - a tiny electric car powered by a washing machine motor, which, surprisingly, was not a sales success on either side of the Atlantic.

The Mini

The Mini, on the other hand, was a sales success everywhere.

Well, nearly everywhere.

Robbie Williams: no shortage of irony

Launched at the height of America's love-affair with block-long gas guzzlers, it sold a paltry 26,000 in the US before being withdrawn from the market in 1967.

BMW has high hopes for its new Mini, but is under no illusions about the size of the marketing job.

Tom Purves, chairman of BMW USA, said: "Awareness (of the Mini) is very low.

"But it is surprising how many people do know about Mini in the United States - baby boomers who backpacked through Europe and so on. It is not unknown."

Take That

The story of the Mini has been repeated time and again in the world of showbusiness.

Apart from The Beatles, Monty Python and Benny Hill, British popular culture has struggled to make an impact on the other side of the Atlantic.

British rock bands still dream of "breaking America" but since the original "British invasion" of the early sixties, remarkably few have actually managed it.

Recent casualties include Blur, Oasis, Take That and Robbie Williams.

Curiously, most of these acts blame the Americans' lack of a sense of irony, forgetting that this was the country that elected Ronald Reagan president.

The British film industry has also struggled to make an impact stateside, taking years to live down director Colin Welland's cry of "The British are coming," as he scooped an Oscar for Chariots of Fire.

Recent successes such as Bridget Jones's Diary and, in TV, The Weakest Link, have led pundits to make similarly rash claims.

But experience shows that - like the Psion organiser - they will ultimately prove to be a false dawn.