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On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certific

On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. In July 1886 the newspapers reported on the first public outing of the three-wheeled Benz Patent Motor Car, model no. 1.

mvzvm 5y ago
What a strange response. Did you respond to the wrong comment?
- foobar502 5y ago
  It takes time.
  - mvzvm 5y ago
    In his own example, it went from patent to useful in a few months. Blockchain has not gone from idea to useful at all yet.
    - tummybug 5y ago
      That is a really hard to achieve definition of useful.
    - Asraelite 5y ago
      Very very few people were using cars at that time. If you apply that same low threshold of usefulness to blockchain then it became useful just as fast, if not faster.
dmitriid 5y ago
Do quote everything, while you're at it. > The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under license from Benz, in France by Emile Roger. There were numerous others, including tricycle builders Rudolf Egg, Edward Butler, and Léon Bollée. Bollée, using a 650 cc (40 cu in) engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average 45 kilometres per hour (28 mph) in the 1897 Paris-Tourville rally. By 1900, mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States. So, 11 years after production started, gas-powered cars were not only rather common, but there were rallies involving them. 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain: https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-... and https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  > 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain This seems an odd claim to make. Currently there's hundreds of Cryptocurrencies using blockchains as a foundation, and more than half a trillion dollars tied up in them. Right now it seems like they're at least speculative investments. If this does not count as a use-case then we'd better break the news to essentially all of finance. Years ago before the values jumped you could do plenty of actual currency things with cryptocurrencies: there were ATMs, you could buy beers at a pub or pay for server hosting (something I did myself), etc. Because of all of the speculation cryptocurrencies have generally become too volatile for that. Nobody wants to find out at the pub there was a market crash and they can't cover their outing. At the time though, it all worked and had incredibly low transaction fees. Then there's the applications for areas like logistics, supply chain, that are all under development. IMO it has absolutely established itself as a technology and like everything new people were quick to try to apply it to every problem and found it largely didn't fit most places. That doesn't mean it isn't useful.
  - vehementi 5y ago
    You can take any obscenely inefficient technology and apply it to anything and say "look, it's useful", but that doesn't make it a good idea or viable or really even not pointless. I heard it best put as: blockchain provides trustlessness at very high operational cost -- do we have a business case where trustlessness is a competitive advantage? If not, just use a database or equivalent So like yes, you can implement insurance and messaging and contracts with blockchain. Is there a need to do that? Does it make sense? Would that business work? (Zero percent of such businesses have worked) The sending money part is certainly a legitimate use. Unfortunately it's being totally broken by speculation on all the coins (not to mention high gas).
    - atweiden 5y ago
      > So like yes, you can implement insurance and messaging and contracts with blockchain. Is there a need to do that? Does it make sense? Would that business work? (Zero percent of such businesses have worked) The tricky part of this, of course, is in the Bitcoin space “validity” hinges upon valuation. Unfortunately cryptocurrency valuation is based on narrative entirely, and narratives continue driving trading volumes even in the face of undeniable technological shortcomings, see e.g. the saga of continual unstable “stablecoin” implosions, or Ripple.
idlewords 5y ago
And over the following years the automobile improved rapidly, becoming more capable, reliable, and gaining users as it went. It didn't spend its first 13 years up on blocks while its supporters yelled at the skeptical and embezzled money from everyone else.
- sthnblllII 5y ago
  Yea. Its closer to the first 30 years of its existence doing pretty much nothing but being sport for rich people.
  - idlewords 5y ago
    It was at least able to roll from point A to point B without consuming a small country's worth of power.

mvzvm 5y ago

What a strange response. Did you respond to the wrong comment?

foobar502 5y ago
It takes time.
- mvzvm 5y ago
  In his own example, it went from patent to useful in a few months. Blockchain has not gone from idea to useful at all yet.
  - tummybug 5y ago
    That is a really hard to achieve definition of useful.
  - Asraelite 5y ago
    Very very few people were using cars at that time. If you apply that same low threshold of usefulness to blockchain then it became useful just as fast, if not faster.

dmitriid 5y ago

Do quote everything, while you're at it. > The first production of automobiles was by Karl Benz in 1888 in Germany and, under license from Benz, in France by Emile Roger. There were numerous others, including tricycle builders Rudolf Egg, Edward Butler, and Léon Bollée. Bollée, using a 650 cc (40 cu in) engine of his own design, enabled his driver, Jamin, to average 45 kilometres per hour (28 mph) in the 1897 Paris-Tourville rally. By 1900, mass production of automobiles had begun in France and the United States. So, 11 years after production started, gas-powered cars were not only rather common, but there were rallies involving them. 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain: https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-... and https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-paradise-is-actually-a-medieval-hellhole-c1ca122efdec https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustle...

BeefWellington 5y ago
> 11 years from introduction, no one has come up with a use-case for blockchain This seems an odd claim to make. Currently there's hundreds of Cryptocurrencies using blockchains as a foundation, and more than half a trillion dollars tied up in them. Right now it seems like they're at least speculative investments. If this does not count as a use-case then we'd better break the news to essentially all of finance. Years ago before the values jumped you could do plenty of actual currency things with cryptocurrencies: there were ATMs, you could buy beers at a pub or pay for server hosting (something I did myself), etc. Because of all of the speculation cryptocurrencies have generally become too volatile for that. Nobody wants to find out at the pub there was a market crash and they can't cover their outing. At the time though, it all worked and had incredibly low transaction fees. Then there's the applications for areas like logistics, supply chain, that are all under development. IMO it has absolutely established itself as a technology and like everything new people were quick to try to apply it to every problem and found it largely didn't fit most places. That doesn't mean it isn't useful.
- vehementi 5y ago
  You can take any obscenely inefficient technology and apply it to anything and say "look, it's useful", but that doesn't make it a good idea or viable or really even not pointless. I heard it best put as: blockchain provides trustlessness at very high operational cost -- do we have a business case where trustlessness is a competitive advantage? If not, just use a database or equivalent So like yes, you can implement insurance and messaging and contracts with blockchain. Is there a need to do that? Does it make sense? Would that business work? (Zero percent of such businesses have worked) The sending money part is certainly a legitimate use. Unfortunately it's being totally broken by speculation on all the coins (not to mention high gas).
  - atweiden 5y ago
    > So like yes, you can implement insurance and messaging and contracts with blockchain. Is there a need to do that? Does it make sense? Would that business work? (Zero percent of such businesses have worked) The tricky part of this, of course, is in the Bitcoin space “validity” hinges upon valuation. Unfortunately cryptocurrency valuation is based on narrative entirely, and narratives continue driving trading volumes even in the face of undeniable technological shortcomings, see e.g. the saga of continual unstable “stablecoin” implosions, or Ripple.

idlewords 5y ago

And over the following years the automobile improved rapidly, becoming more capable, reliable, and gaining users as it went. It didn't spend its first 13 years up on blocks while its supporters yelled at the skeptical and embezzled money from everyone else.

sthnblllII 5y ago
Yea. Its closer to the first 30 years of its existence doing pretty much nothing but being sport for rich people.
- idlewords 5y ago
  It was at least able to roll from point A to point B without consuming a small country's worth of power.