Other inventions that have taken 500 years are not comparable: We're now 7bn people whereas the total number of people since the beginning of Earth is ~100bn. T

Other inventions that have taken 500 years are not comparable: We're now 7bn people whereas the total number of people since the beginning of Earth is ~100bn. That means research can advance as much in 1 generation as it advanced in a thousand years, and it's accelerated by 1/a much greater proportion of people who can do research full time compared to <1% at the time of Da Vinci, and 2/greater access to better tools.