Since we retired and moved to North Carolina, we have been watching lots of movies and catching up on those I missed during my professional career. I am just amazed at the way credit is spread around at the end of movies. I don't know if you have ever watched them the whole way through, but it is truly amazing. Of course, the stars are mentioned not only at the beginning but also at the end along with the full cast. The producers and directors are prominently mentioned. And the screenwriters. Not only is the director mentioned, but also the assistant director and maybe even the assistant to the assistant director. Likewise, there is the cameraman and the assistant cameraman and maybe even the second assistant cameraman. Friends who are knowledgeable about movie making tell me that the cameraman is very important, and I should note the name, especially if I like the movie. I have seen the "grips" mentioned and even assistant grips. I don't know who pays attention to all these credits, except that the grips probably do and their family and friends. I don't know where else in life so many people involved in a project are given credit in print. I find it astonishing.
Everybody likes credit, but some professions are obsessive about it. It is quite common in book credits to see who typed the manuscript in addition to those who read and criticized the manuscript or gave advice during the writing and thanking their spouse and children for supporting them. Often you are told who edited the manuscript and, of course, who published it is paramount. Probably mentioned also is who printed the book. Sometimes you are told who researched matters for the book other than the author. The more famous you are as a writer, the more likely you are to have various assistants do a lot of the work. Cases are known where some assistant even wrote the manuscript but was not even given an acknowledgment. Authors watch each other like hawks, looking for passages that are identical to their own work. When these are found, there is often a claim of plagiarism. There is the case of a famous historian who did some copying and noted in a footnote at the end of the book that it came from so and so. That wasn't good enough. In a case that leaves me gasping, I know of two cases where authors were sued for plagiarism by publishers for the authors using passages of their own work in other sources without attribution (i.e. plagiarizing themselves)! The publisher often owns the copyright of the book or article, not the author.
Research scientists are obsessive about credit. A research scientist gets a big emotional kick when he or she wrests a new fact from nature about how she does things, but then they like to get credit for it, particularly from their peers. The more credit the better. I think it is safe to say that a research scientist never gets enough. There are heated arguments about who else should get some credit, say who should be a co-author or who should even get an acknowledgment. With famous scientists you rarely know the large members of the team involved in producing a manuscript. Not surprisingly they tend to produce more papers than scientists who do it all by themselves, conceive of the idea, get the information, and write the paper. Reviewers some times get mentioned though often anomalously because you don't know their names. Who typed the manuscript or who edited it never. The people that actually produced the data or information for the manuscript are rarely mentioned. In fact, many scientific journals will cross such information out, even if it is given. And then there are the arguments sort of like plagiarism over who really proposed a solution to a problem first. Such arguments can be endless. Often there is a race to see who can solve a problem first (see" The Double Helix" by James D. Watson where Rosalind Franklin got cut out of credit.). The more famous the scientist in these disputes, the more likely he or she will end up with the credit, rightly or wrongly. And a research scientist really knows he or she has it made when mutterings made at a cocktail party make it into print, the ultimate.
I guess near the last on the of giving credit are painters. Especially in modern times, the person who signs the painting may never have put brush to canvas or maybe they added highlights at most. And such proxy painting can cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase. There is no place on the canvas where the people that actually did the work on the painting are mentioned or even a note on the back. Modern painting is, for the most part, a manufacturing process where the employer gets all the credit.
Often on buildings, you see a plaque of who the architects and engineering firms and donors for building the building were along with the names of the governor and/or mayor and maybe the heads of bureaus involved, but you never see the names of the people who actually assembled the buildings. In India, only the patron's name was put on famous buildings like the Taj Mahal. Those who have the gold, rule!
The last on the list of groups that give credit are probably automobiles. You might think that at least somewhere on the car there would be a plague where the names of the designers would be mentioned, but so far as I know they aren't. Those who make the parts for the car and assemble it are not really human beings but equipment. I guess if the Chairman and the CEO can restrain themselves from putting their names on cars, anonymity for everyone can be forgiven.
Note (July 10th): Getting credit can be very difficult. Consider the question "Who was president when the Berlin Wall was torn down?" This has come up again because of the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan. I think most people would credit Ronald Reagan; however, it was George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan was just one of a string of Presidents to weaken the Soviet Union, but, because of his popularity, he gets all the credit. When Gorbachev came into power in March of 1985, he started making reforms because of the stagnant Soviet economy: Gorbachev's primary goal as General Secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years.
In 1985, he announced that the Soviet economy was stalled and that reorganization was needed. Gorbachev soon realized that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union)
