Have you got any examples of time lapses between the technology existing and the actual invention?
Some things were invented in Ancient Greece and Rome that were lost on account of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The Romans knew how to make plywood – it’s what they made the infantry’s shields out of, which implies the existence of water powered sawmills, something that didn’t appear in Europe again for nearly a thousand years. The Greeks invented an early steam engine, but it was a curiosity as no one knew what to do with it. Some things, like stoves, could have been been broadly adopted much earlier than they were. Most homes in Europe were heated by the fireplace, which for a long time didn’t even have a chimney – the smoke went out of a hole in the roof. Even poor people can use local rocks to build a chimney, so the cost wasn’t a factor. The first real indoor stove used for heating and later cooking was the Franklin stove, invented by good old Ben Franklin. Another invention that could have been invented hundreds of years earlier was the bicycle. It wouldn’t have been comforta
