A recent Facebook status of mine: Too bad Benjamin Franklin wasn’t alive in 1835; he could have invented the Internet. The relay had been invented around then; that’s theoretically all that’s needed for computation and error correction, though it would go very slowly.
And if not then, by the time they had extensive telegraph or telephone networks, basic computation, and typewriters, about 1890 (sic). Why didn’t it? Numerous barriers, and their overcoming since then counts as political and scientific advances.
A recent Facebook status of mine: Too bad Benjamin Franklin wasn’t alive in 1835; he could have invented the Internet. The relay had been invented around then; that’s theoretically all that’s needed for computation and error correction, though it would go very slowly.
Well, Charles Babbage was alive back then...
Huh. Then, uh… too bad Charles Babbage wasn’t Benjamin Franklin?
And if not then, by the time they had extensive telegraph or telephone networks, basic computation, and typewriters, about 1890 (sic). Why didn’t it? Numerous barriers, and their overcoming since then counts as political and scientific advances.