What Invention or Discovery Happened Oddly Late or Early?

[Spock]

I've often wondered if any humans invented or discovered something way too early, all things considered. Penicillin is something that some people think was discovered later than it should have been.

Any thoughts on what invention or discovery seems, looking back, to not have happened exactly at the "right time"?

 

[Workable Goblin]

MacCauley mentioned NC tools a while back. Tools that can be controlled automatically, making making many things (like gun barrels) much easier. Apparently, a Frenchman came up with the idea in the early 1800s or possibly the late 1700s, but died before he could do anything with it, then it had to wait on the post-war era.

I'd nominate elementary algebra (the idea, basically, of letting numbers be represented by *other things* for calculational purposes). The Greeks did a lot of mathematical work, so did the Indians, and it seems really weird no one came up with the seemingly simple idea of saying, "Oh, what if I called the perimeter of this square p to simplify my calculation and help formulate a general rule"? Instead, they had to suffer through long-winded passages trying to explain things that could be dealt with in a line or two of middle-school math. I mean, which is easier to understand:

"The perimeter of a square is four times the length of any one side" or

p = 4s

Algebra is probably the greatest mathematical invention of all time, rivaled only by numbers themselves. It would be absolutely impossible to do vast amounts of modern mathematics without them and the tendency towards abstraction they represent.

 

[NHBL]

Gunpowder?

Was there any particular reason for gunpowder to be discovered when it was? There was no real chemistry, and no reason that I know of to mix those particular things together. I could easily imagine gunpowder waiting a long time to crop up.

 

[Sior]

Was there any particular reason for gunpowder to be discovered when it was? There was no real chemistry, and no reason that I know of to mix those particular things together. I could easily imagine gunpowder waiting a long time to crop up.

It started life as an elixir of life for the first Chinese Emperor. He had various ‘magicians’ mixing all sorts of thing together to prolong his life and gunpowder was a by-product.

 

[Wolfpaw]

The telescope came about rather late in the West.

European/Greco-Roman cultural shifts towards acceptance of monotheism came about much sooner than Greco-Roman religious trends indicated.

The tank could have come about sooner. Da Vinci designed one, the only flaw being that he (purposefully?) designed the wheels to be moving in opposite directions.

You know, come to think of it, several things could have appeared much sooner if more of da Vinci's inventions had been produced.

 

[MrP]

MacCauley mentioned NC tools a while back. Tools that can be controlled automatically, making making many things (like gun barrels) much easier. Apparently, a Frenchman came up with the idea in the early 1800s or possibly the late 1700s, but died before he could do anything with it, then it had to wait on the post-war era.

I'd nominate elementary algebra (the idea, basically, of letting numbers be represented by *other things* for calculational purposes). The Greeks did a lot of mathematical work, so did the Indians, and it seems really weird no one came up with the seemingly simple idea of saying, "Oh, what if I called the perimeter of this square p to simplify my calculation and help formulate a general rule"? Instead, they had to suffer through long-winded passages trying to explain things that could be dealt with in a line or two of middle-school math. I mean, which is easier to understand:

"The perimeter of a square is four times the length of any one side" or

p = 4s

Algebra is probably the greatest mathematical invention of all time, rivaled only by numbers themselves. It would be absolutely impossible to do vast amounts of modern mathematics without them and the tendency towards abstraction they represent.

I think there is some explanation of that in how the ancient Greeks wrote their numbers. They make use of the Greek alphabet (although less in the acrophonic system than the alphabetic). This remains something of a problem with the Romans, since they've set aside I, V, X, L, C, D and M for their numbers. That said, as with the acrophonic system, it's better than the other Greek one. I don't know what the Indian numerals were like, so I can't speak as to that.

 

[MRig]

The telescope came about rather late in the West.

European/Greco-Roman cultural shifts towards acceptance of monotheism came about much sooner than Greco-Roman religious trends indicated.

The tank could have come about sooner. Da Vinci designed one, the only flaw being that he (purposefully?) designed the wheels to be moving in opposite directions.

You know, come to think of it, several things could have appeared much sooner if more of da Vinci's inventions had been produced.

'Course, maybe this means that Leonardo was so far ahead of his time that had his stuff been produced it would have been unusually early. Maybe most TLs have a few geniuses whose works survive, but were never created in their own time.

 

[Wolfpaw]

'Course, maybe this means that Leonardo was so far ahead of his time that had his stuff been produced it would have been unusually early. Maybe most TLs have a few geniuses whose works survive, but were never created in their own time.

Hrmm. Fair point, sirrah. Fair point.

 

[J.D.Ward]

The hot air balloon.

It's reallly Neolithic technology. The fabric of the balloon itself is the most high-tech part of the machine, requiring either woven fabric and some sort of sealant or paper.

Fire + basket + rope + reasonably air-tight bag = manned flight.

Why did no one put one together before the Industrial Revolution?

 

[MRig]

The hot air balloon.

It's reallly Neolithic technology. The fabric of the balloon itself is the most high-tech part of the machine, requiring either woven fabric and some sort of sealant or paper.

Fire + basket + rope + reasonably air-tight bag = manned flight.

Why did no one put one together before the Industrial Revolution?

Lack of widespread fabric availability maybe? You need quite a lot of fabric for that and the early ind rev was all about textiles.

 

[Valdemar II]

Bloomery-type blast furnace honestly you could almost develop it at any point in history, if I remember correctly some African tribes jumped from stone-age to iron-age through the use of it.
It could be quite interesting to see the blast furnace being developed by Euroasian hunter-gathners, while unlikely it would be quite possible, through it would be hard to see what kind of accident would result in it.

 

[carlton_bach]

Lack of widespread fabric availability maybe? You need quite a lot of fabric for that and the early ind rev was all about textiles.

Not sure - if they had figured out the principle and applied it to manned flight, the prestige and usefulness would very likely have dictated the fabric be made available. Ships need an awful lot of expensive canvas, too, and they got equipped.

I rather suspect it was a genuine case of not making the connection. There is no lighter-than-air flight to observe, most prescientific theories don't work with the idea of air as 'something', and even if you have one, filling a big, thin-skinned balloon with hot air to make it fly isn't exactly intuitive.

 

[Valdemar II]

Not sure - if they had figured out the principle and applied it to manned flight, the prestige and usefulness would very likely have dictated the fabric be made available. Ships need an awful lot of expensive canvas, too, and they got equipped.

I rather suspect it was a genuine case of not making the connection. There is no lighter-than-air flight to observe, most prescientific theories don't work with the idea of air as 'something', and even if you have one, filling a big, thin-skinned balloon with hot air to make it fly isn't exactly intuitive.

While there's nothing intuitive about it, it would just need someone observe a pierce of light fabric getting blown into a fire and rise into the air, and think about and maybe experiment with it.

 

[DuQuense]

Fuel Cells being invented in the 1830's, with no real development till after the 1970's Gas Crisis.

 

[Beedok]

I have heard theories that the Nazca used hot air balloons, though I'm not sure how widely accepted said theory is.

 

[Workable Goblin]

Fuel Cells being invented in the 1830's, with no real development till after the 1970's Gas Crisis.

Well, that's because they're complicated and fiddly, and not as easy to work with or efficient as internal combustion engines or steam engines (not to mention how hard it is to work with hydrogen, which is the most efficient fuel, I believe). I would argue that discovering the principle in the 1830s was oddly early, not that serious work waiting until the 1960s (they had to work with them in the space program) was oddly late.

 

[eschaton]

I've always found it odd that the bicycle wasn't invented until the 19th century , considering it's pretty simple in principle. As one example, adding the chain drive to bicycle design in the 1885 finally made it a safe, easy method of transit. But chain drives have been in use since at least 300 BC. Of course, tires probably couldn't come about until the invention of rubber, but tireless bikes would not have been very rough rides on unpaved surfaces. So I see little reason, for example, someone couldn't have invented the bicycle in late antiquity.

 

[DG Valdron]

Someone mentioned the telescope. But eyeglasses, microscopes, any number of lens applications.

 

[wilcoxchar]

IMO personal use of some kind of email or instant messaging came around rather late. You essentially have the technology down by the 1920s and it was being used for newswires and stock tickers at the time already. Why didn't someone make a version for personal use?

Also along those lines, fax machines. The pantelegraph was invented in the 1860s and used by Napoleon III!

 

[The Doctor]

I've heard arguments that the jump from cathode ray tubes to fiber optics and similar tech was a huge jump and might have had some "help"