It's histories like these that make me wince when people say some new thing is dead or doesn't work. If it's attempting to do something people want, we'll eventually make it work.
The next key advance didn’t come until decades later, when someone put pedals on the bike.
It's fun to consider which current things lack pedals like bicycles once did.
For centuries, progress was stalled because inventors were all trying to create multi-person four-wheeled carriages, rather than single-person two-wheeled vehicles.
The past as an unwelcome anchor.
Regarding economic factors, it seems that there needs to be a certain level of surplus to support the culture-wide research and development effort that creates inventions.
It seems like we all have lived in surplus for awhile. Are we seeing the number of inventions we'd expect from that surplus though?
Pushpak