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Often multiple inventors arrive at the same idea at almost the same time, for example Edison and Swan for the light bulb, Meucci and Bell (among others) for the
by UncleSlacky 4y ago
Often multiple inventors arrive at the same idea at almost the same time, for example Edison and Swan for the light bulb, Meucci and Bell (among others) for the telephone, Tesla and Marconi for radio, the Wrights and many others for the airplane etc. possibly because the technological and social level of society has reached a certain point in its development when the "time is ripe" for a given invention. As Charles Fort put it:
> A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoNot sure I buy that. I've never found users (culture) knows what it wants next. In software, users will suggest incremental improvements but never a whole new tool. I think it's steam-engine-time, when the steam engine arrives. And gets successfully marketed.
- michaelt 4y agoSome things are obvious - people have talked about "self-driving cars" for almost as long as there have been cars. Pirates and porn-lovers were watching entire movies on their computers, via broadband internet, 5+ years before Netflix launched their first streaming service. Electric cars - around since the 1880s. Other things are completely non-obvious. Politicians and journalists falling in love with a platform that only allows 140-character messages? Very much unexpected.
- perilunar 4y agoThe Wright Brothers didn't come up with the idea of the airplane at all — people had been working on it for over 100 years.
- bumby 4y agoThere’s an argument that heavier than air flight was mainly due to Curtis who was able to help the Wrights get an engine with a much better power:weight ratio. The Wrights made many contributions, notably a very efficient propeller, I believe. But some of their biggest claims, like wing-warping, succumbed to others ideas like Curtis’ ailerons.
- flavius29663 4y agoand without the Wright Brothers, the plane would have developed regardless, the time was indeed ripe for flying. People have been hopping around in self propelled planes for a few years before the Wrights, it would have only been a matter of time until they perfected it.
- marcosdumay 4y agoYet on the 10 years around their flight, a lot of people developed powered flight independently. And none did it on the previous 95 years.
- scythe 4y agoThe light bulb was first developed by Sir Humphry Davy eighty years before Edison. The only problem was that it was made of platinum, which turns out to be impractical. Edison's great achievement was making it affordable enough for everyone to get one.