What real-world tech did our collective human civilization or species miss out on until too late, preventing us from experiencing an era based in it?
An example could be the potentially highly efficient heat engine, the Stirling engine, which shows up in its namesake S.M. Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers as an alternative to the internal combustion engine.
What if had arrived earlier and beaten the steam engine?
I suppose the Difference Engine is the canonical genre example of a technology that we have now but we didn’t arrive at earlier at the appropriate time for which to spark a revolution.
Actually Heron’s steam engine is a better example, but it’s a little exotic and interesting compared to alternative tech that never made it big.
An example could be the potentially highly efficient heat engine, the Stirling engine, which shows up in its namesake S.M. Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers as an alternative to the internal combustion engine.
Stirling engine - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
What if had arrived earlier and beaten the steam engine?
I suppose the Difference Engine is the canonical genre example of a technology that we have now but we didn’t arrive at earlier at the appropriate time for which to spark a revolution.
Actually Heron’s steam engine is a better example, but it’s a little exotic and interesting compared to alternative tech that never made it big.