Comment Comment by jiggawatts My example is lighting technology:Wood fires were the only option for something like a few hundred thousand years.Oil lamps for millennia.Tallow or beeswax candles are modern technology, appearing after the fall of the Roman Empire.Gas lighting was widespread for less than a century.Incandescent lightbulbs for another century, but were starting to get replaced by fluorescent tubes just decades later.Cold cathode fluorescents saw mainstream use for about two decades.LEDs completely displaced almost all previous forms of lighting in less than a decade.I recently read about a new form of lighting developed and commercialised in just a few of years: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737 parent jiggawatts 9 months ago
Wood fires were the only option for something like a few hundred thousand years.
Oil lamps for millennia.
Tallow or beeswax candles are modern technology, appearing after the fall of the Roman Empire.
Gas lighting was widespread for less than a century.
Incandescent lightbulbs for another century, but were starting to get replaced by fluorescent tubes just decades later.
Cold cathode fluorescents saw mainstream use for about two decades.
LEDs completely displaced almost all previous forms of lighting in less than a decade.
I recently read about a new form of lighting developed and commercialised in just a few of years: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737