What is something that began in the USA and spread around the world?

Invented in the UK by a Scotsman, Robert Logie Baird.

Charles Jenkins of Indiana. Filed for his patent in 1922.  
Baird was in 1924. 

Jenkins' machine was a refinement of German Paul Nipkow's design, mechanical. Baird was the first to transmit electronically.

Baird's was still mechanical....he also used Nipkow's disk. 
First fully functional all electronic television was invented by Philo Taylor Farnsworth of Utah. 

Thanks for your hard work doing all that research.

Thanks, but I didn't have to work that hard. I learned about Whitney and interchangeable parts in a college history class, "Social History of Western Technology," ironically not at Yale, because I subsequently went there for my MBA, which is when I learned about Camp and his accomplishments.

I accidentally gave myself AP. There, it's fixed now.

OK by me.

American football hasn't really "spread around the world", it's practically unknown outside of the US and Canada.

It's quite popular in England, where the NFL plays and sells out several games each season.

 

  “Quite popular”? I certainly doubt that, and besides, how many of a season’s NFL games are even played in England? 

FACT CHECK NEEDED HERE TO ASCERTAIN THE VALIDITY OF YOUR CLAIM OR LACK THEREOF.

Out of all the games played in a single season (it has varied over the decades but currently it is 272 games, with each of the NFL's 32 teams playing 17 games in 18 weeks "bye" week off. For the 2021 season), exactly a whopping TWO games in England out of the total. In past years, an explosively grand figure of FOUR games from that total have been played in England annually. 

  Furthermore, many of the in-person spectators at NFL games in England are Americans who either live there or Americans who travel there specifically to see the games as part of their vacation planning. Few British citizens attend or even tolerate gridiron football due to their notion that it’s inferior to their football (which Americans call soccer), rugby, or even cricket, as evidenced by the oft-proffered taunts of our own resident Aussie, Slart.  Sports networks don’t like to show empty seats on televised broadcasts, so whenever possible, they frequently aim cameras at packs of people huddled together in an attempt to make it appear that attendance is in abundance, it’s a strategic move in cahoots with the entire industry in order to help profits stay high. 

:|
 

The NFL has played and sold out 30 games in London since 2007. How many do you need? They also have played and sold out four games in Mexico City.

 

  (Sigh. Poor Stu, drowning in delusion.)

  Stu, ol’ Buddy, you’re a numbers guy, aren’t you? Thirty measly games since 2007 out of more than  3,500 games total is a paltry sum. The foreign-venue games have not and can not have sold out every single time. I truly doubt they’ve ever sold out, but that’s your claim, not mine. British people simply don’t gravitate toward gridiron in the numbers you imagine, pal, nor do Mexican fans. Numerous Mexican fans of gridiron football live along the northern Mexican states that border the US, but the games are played in Mexico City, at least 1,000 miles south. I am not saying those games don’t sell out, with the size and population of the capital of Mexico it’s feasible, England is a different story.
~

 

Go look at the attendance figures.

 

  Stu, I can’t take your order as this isn’t my table. Come on, you know me well enough by now that it’s futile to try and send me on some internet goose chase! I don’t respond well at all the people ordering me to hit the search engines, it gets negative traction with me! I’m not a teenager, pal, not a ‘lenial! 

Neither am I, but I do it. Age is no excuse for being lame.

And Australian rugby teams have played to sold-out crowds in the US. How many people globally outside the US actually participate? More Americans play rugby.

OK. I have no idea why you and Randy think it's such a big deal to argue about.

No argument with basketball (or baseball, to a lesser extent). I never took that much of an interest in basketball because I have never been tall enough to play. I coached my daughter's team for a while - during which they got a reputation for being tough, uncompromising and racking up a huge number of personal fouls ...