Yeah! I think breakthroughs are also sometimes ... more boring than people expect? Like, there isn't really an "invention of the transformer" singular breakthr

Yeah! I think breakthroughs are also sometimes ... more boring than people expect? Like, there isn't really an "invention of the transformer" singular breakthrough moment for lithium ion batteries. But there absolutely is a breakthrough-level difference in battery technology between, say, the 90s and today. Maybe battery nerds would say there were breakthrough moments like that, but when I read The Powerhouse (Steve Levine), which is about some of these developments, I came away surprised and impressed by how incremental but consistent the progress was. Same thing with solar panels. We figured out how to do PV in the middle of the 20th century, but it didn't really work until recently, after tons of "boring" incremental progress on it.