Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
rootsofprogress.org
Saved by Johanna
Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
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
Anton Howes • Age of Invention: Why wasn't the Steam Engine Invented Earlier? Part III
The market grew slowly at first, accelerating only as experiments led to practical applications like the spreadsheet, introduced in 1979. As use grew, observation of use caused a reduction in uncertainty, leading to more adoption in a self-reinforcing cycle. This kind of gathering momentum takes time in every technological wave: It took almost 30
... See more“It wasn’t as though people, after millennia of head-scratching, suddenly “discovered” the steam engine, the spinning jenny, and the telegraph, and modernity unspooled. Rather, people’s priorities underwent a sea change with the onset of the modern age, turning to efficiency, objective measurement, and other goals that made such inventions
... See more