You can start with electric power grids. The oil industry. Many advances in locomotives. Check out the 1893 world's fair in Chicago. The automobile industry. Airplanes.
Electric power grids originated in the UK, as did generators.
Drilling and refining of oil in Silesia (now variously parts of Poland, Germany, and Czechia). The drilling techniques used by Col. Drake in 1869 were based on thousands-of-years-old salt-mining and drilling techniques first developed in China.[1]
The first functional automobiles were produced in Germany, not the United States.[2]
Railroads were invented in the UK and France, though the first US rail boom was occurring at roughly the same time as France's development.[3]
Electric lighting (arc light, incandescent light) was invented in the UK.[4]
After the Wrights, much early aeronautical development occurred in France. In part due to Wilbur Wright's demonstrations and promotions there.
Russia developed, amongst other things: the electric telegraph, punch cards, the first caterpillar tracks, an electric filament lamp pre-dating Edison's, electrified rail, videotape, radio, the solar cell, electric transformers, television (as well as the kinescope, used for tape-delayed broadcasts), petroleum cracking, synthetic rubber, the grain harvester, nuclear power generation, kidney transplants, heart-lung transplant, artificial steroids, and, within your field of aerospace, the helicopter, airliners, emergency parachute, artificial satellites, ICBMs, ABMs, and manned space flight.[5][6]
________________________________
Notes:
1. See Manfreid Weisenbacher's Sources of Power for a history of Silesian oil pioneering.
Let's take one your cases: the electric light bulb.
Edison invented it. Earlier bulbs were neither practical nor useful. Edison endured years of lawsuits by those earlier useless bulbs, and they all lost.
How about helicopters? Sikorsky invented the first practical single rotor helicopter. While Sikorksy was russian, he developed the VS-300 in the US.
Electric power grids? The first was in New York City. Edison pioneered most of the technology in it. The first AC grid was at Niagara Falls supplying power to Buffalo, NY.
Don't forget about the Model T. Ford invented the mass produced automobile.
Schilling's telegraph system was a dead end, requiring multiple wires and had a needle swinging to various letters. Morse's one actually was practical, and the first line was in the US.
ICBMs - more like the Germans invented it (V2) and the Russians forced those Germans to extend it for them.
Television had many fathers. Attributing it to Russia is just silly. The first television broadcasting station was in New York. The first electronic television was invented by Farnsworth, an American.
But you can legitimately credit the Russians for the first artificial satellite and the first man in space.
The V2 was decidedly continental with a range of 320 km (200 mi). That would be considered "tactical" under present nomenclature. ICBM is considered for ranges in excess of 5,500 km (3,400 mi).
The first successful ICBM was the R-7 Semyorka (NATO: SS-6 Sapwood), with an 8,800 km (5,500 mi) range. Flight testing began in 1957, and the design was operational by 1958. A modified R-7 launched Sputnik 1, in October, 1957.
I'm not arguing that further development of specific innovations didn't proceed to a high degree in the United States.
But the question regarding Japan was innovation vs. copying. The Unites States, until at least the late 19th century, and arguably well into the 20th, was copying at least to a significant degree. You might care to acknowledge this point.
Your point that countries "[n]eed a free market to enable people to profit from improvements" may have greater merits, though that too seems arguable.
The US largely copied the British through the early 20th century.
Then started copying the Germans and Russians.