Bonus question: What is an invention that was really important and there is no telling how long we would have to wait for it to appear had it not been discovered by the one credited with it?
Bonus question: What is an invention that was really important and there is no telling how long we would have to wait for it to appear had it not been discovered by the one credited with it?
I think the telephone sort of fits. It’s attributed to Bell but that’s mainly because he wiggled his way into a US patent before his competition. The telephone has many fathers though: Bourseul, Manzetti, Reis - just to name three. The latter is also the father of the word telephone but died before it took off. There were many engineers tinkering so if Bell hadn’t taken the crown, another person would have done it.
Bonus answer: penicillin. Alexander Flemming. A lucky, accidental discovery. If mold hadn’t gotten sloppily into his cultures we might all have died of the plague or something nice like that.