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The bicycle. It's a surprisingly recent invention despite its simplistic material and manufacturing requirements.

• School-Cotton 2y ago
  Surprisingly, there’s also still no simple explanation for why a bicycle works. It’s easier to understand how a modern microprocessor works than a bicycle.
• nradov 2y ago
  We've discussed bicycles before. The material is hardly simplistic. There wasn't much serendipity involved. Practical bicycles came soon after the necessary basic technology had been developed, including precision bearings and robust pneumatic rubber tires. This wasn't a case where we could have had bicycles a century earlier if someone had come up with the idea.
  • kllrnohj 2y ago
    "practical bicycles" is nebulous, vague, and always means whatever you want it to mean to claim to be right. Bicycles do not need precision bearings nor pneumatic tires, as proven by the fact that bicycles predate them by decades. Also radial style ball bearings were invented for bicycles. Bicycles were the catalyst for precision bearings, not the other way around. Similarly pneumatic tires were created for tricycles (long after pedal bicycles were already invented) Yes we absolutely could have had 2 wheeled transportation centuries earlier. Roads, the actually necessary infrastructure, was long since a thing for carts and wagons.