3 ms·

Battery technology seems like a good candidate given its long period of stagnation. Our current progression was informed by the hiatus like the microcontroller

• eru 4y ago
  What do you mean by long period of stagnation? Which time period are you talking about? I couldn't find a grand unifying graph of eg cost-per-kWh of electricity storage since 1900 or so, but what I could find points to steady declines in price. Both in single use batteries and in rechargeables. What you might see as stagnation is that rechargeable batteries haven only rather recently become good enough for many exciting applications (like practical electric cars). But just because we've only recently crossed these thresholds, doesn't mean there was stagnation earlier. See eg https://enerpoly.com/alkaline-cell-then-and-now/ https://enerpoly.com/alkaline-cell-then-and-now/ for some important progress that you might have missed. The humble lead-acid battery also has a fascinating history, that is full of steady improvements. > As an example, lead battery life has increased by 30-35% in the last 20 years. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/10/27/the-lead-acid-batterys-demise-has-been-greatly-exaggerated/?sh=791361db4016 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/10/27/the-lead-aci...