flâneur

When innovation hits “snooze”

blog.rootsofprogress.org · 701 words · saved by 1 readers

One theme across many areas of industrial progress is how often initial observations or inventions were dropped or remained stagnant for many years before being picked up again and developed into something big and important.

One theme across many areas of industrial progress is how often initial observations or inventions were dropped or remained stagnant for many years before being picked up again and developed into something big and important. Some examples: In electricity, key developments were slow and spaced apart. The ability of amber to collect static electricity was known to the ancient Greeks. More than 2,000 years later, in the 1600s, William Gilbert discovered and documented that other materials can do this as well. Then, again, nothing happened for decades. This pattern was seen even in the 1700s…

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