> And it is not apparent whether those doing the "reinvention" knew what the constrain or trade offs or limitation the previous technology had. I'm quite sure

> And it is not apparent whether those doing the "reinvention" knew what the constrain or trade offs or limitation the previous technology had. I'm quite sure that very often the "reinvention" is literally a reinvention - that is not based on previous invention, but an independent solution that just happens to be similiar to something created earlier (without the reinventors knowledge of the existing previous invention). With an abstraction level high enough, many concrete problems become one abstract problem with a few abstract solutions, and sometimes only very few "obvious"[0] solutions. This leads to a situation when many independent persons/teams come up with a concrete solution to their concrete problem that coincidentally happens to be very similiar to other solutions. If one of those solutions where created in the past, and others where rediscovered later, we then retrospectively call those later solutions as "reinventions" regardless of them being literal or just figurative reinventions.[1] [0] in this context "obvious" defined as "most likely to be independently found/created by any sane person" [1] "literal reinvention" being a solution that was consciously based on some previously existing invention and a "figurative" when it just happens to be similiar to something created in the past but the inventor did not (consciously) base their work on something already existing