[belugacat]

It's funny how these things work. There are many inventions that, looking back, could've happened centuries earlier purely from a resource/physical constraints point of view (of course, scientific knowledge doesn't work quite that way).

As a film photographer, if I ever find myself in possession of a time machine, the first thing I'll do is go back to ancient Minoa/Rome/Egypt/China/Tikal and show people how to make silver based emulsions to use with pinhole cameras.

In a similar vein, this article "Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?" is a nice read.

https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-...