This entire discussion is very interesting, with arguments for and against the idea that the underlying materials technology was (or was not) sufficient for a b

This entire discussion is very interesting, with arguments for and against the idea that the underlying materials technology was (or was not) sufficient for a bicycle to have emerged 50 or more years earlier. This discussion is similar to flawed arguments about evolution. It assumes that at any given point in time, there was an exhaustive search of solution space (in this case for personal transportation). In discussions of evolution, people often propose that a particular solution occurred because it was optimal in some way. But neither evolution, nor technology development, involves an exhaustive search. Things happened by chance, and some things were not tried as early as they might have been (or they were tried and tried and found lacking in some way), until, by chance, the right conditions allowed the technology (or evolutionary trait) to emerge. The role of chance is often under appreciated.