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I was thinking, in the history of the world has there ever been anything that would not have been invented if the person we credit it with never thougt of it?
Can we point to one inventor that if they didn't have that Ah Ha moment what they discovered would have never come to be?
I think that with most things someone else would have thought of it.
In pre historic times the first guy to figure out how to make fire was probably a pioneer who set man on the course to today. If he hadn't done it someone else would have.
From Leonardo Devinnci to Bill Gates, if they didn't do what they did I think someone eventually would have.
Has there ever been an invention that was such a flash of brilliance that no one else could have thought of it given time?
Interesting question that doesn't really have an answer. However, when I was thinking about this, many major inventions that we credit to an individual were credited to them simply becuase they perfected it, created it as we know it or brought it to market first. In most cases there plenty of other people working on the same "invention". Think things like radio, electric light, cars, etc.
It wasn't just one guy that discovered fire. It was one guy in every tribe or group or general area around the world that discovered fire at different times. Same with all other things like the wheel, farming, weapons, etc.
But it is hard to say if one person didn't invent this, it would not have been invented at all. Well maybe the snuggie.
I think any invention would have happened eventually without the actions of the credited inventor. The question really comes down to how long it would have taken and what the impact would have been on civilization had the invention not happened at the time that it did.
Electric lighting - What would the impact have been had Edison not invented (actually perfected, as electric lighting had been around since 1800 or so) the incandescent light bulb when he did? Had it taken another 20-30 years, the oil industry may have managed to keep it from hitting the market. As it was, they nearly succeeded with Edison's product, and another quarter of a century may have afforded big oil the opportunity to block the product.
The horse-drawn chariot - This was, perhaps, one of the most important military inventions of history. It's the predecessor to nearly every mobile military unit that is currently in existence, and it was at the core of nearly every major empire's ascension. How far back would civilization have been pushed had the chariot not come into existence for another 500 years?
On a related note, the domestication of horses is thought to have happened circa 4000-3500 B.C. What if that domestication hadn't taken place for another thousand years?
Many inventions were key to historical incidents, so the question really comes down to how changed would history be if they hadn't happened when they did?
ETA: On the flip side, how different would history have been had some inventions happened earlier or in different places? For example, had gunpowder been invented in the Middle East rather than the Far East, the entire region could be vastly different today. Had the Clovis Culture domesticated the horse rather than hunting it to extinction (common theory on what happened to the North American horse circa 12,000 B.C.), how different would the Americas have been by the time the Europeans arrived?
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