Sadly progress can be very slow. People slowly perceive a need. Solutions are attempted. Solutions are found. Refined. Become common place.
Canning is a perfect example. Problem - food rots.
Many solutions were tried. Not all good. As best as I can recall there was a sailing ship trying to find a way
over North America. It had a large supply of lead sealed metal cans. The lead is suspected of causing lead poisoning and dementia in the crew. They all died in the frozen north.
10 years from now we'll be reading from multifunctional readers with unbreakable screens. We'll probably have paid $100 for them, but that $100 will be equivalent to $30 today. If we're lucky, that is.
