The answer, I think, is what it almost always is: that inventors are simply extremely rare. People can have all the incentives, all the materials, all the mechanical skills, and even all the right general notions of how things work. As we’ve seen, even Savery himself was apparently inspired by the same ancient experiment as everyone else who worked... See more

The new design ushered in a golden age, during which cycling flourished as a leisure activity and a means of truly personal locomotion. It let people travel as quickly as they could on horseback, but without the expense of buying, feeding, and maintaining a horse. And unlike trains, which offered high-speed travel subject to a strict timetable and

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