HTTP is really simple, I'm sort of surprised it (and a basic HTML-ish thing) aren't as old as FTP or SMTP. (Yes, yes, gopher, I'm not counting that :-) )
Oh, and cup holders in cars, I'm sure they could have been built with 60s technology, or even earlier :-)
HTTPI did think of that (and the web in general) as a possibility. The underlying tech is really pretty straightforward, and was way behind the then-current research understanding of hypertext systems. There certainly were HTTP/HTML-like technologies about already, many of them superior in technical terms to HTTP/HTML-as-it-was. Also remember HTML was cobbled together in SGML, which goes back to the 60s
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In my head I think you kind of need batteries before you can understand electricity at all - you need a dependable source to research it. Leyden jars were probably the earliest electrical storage system, and were critical to researching electricity at all, which led to stuff like Galvani's frog's legs and Volta's piles.
The germ theory of disease, or at least the idea of washing before surgery rather than after! There are probably a lot of similar examples where progress was held back by entrenched ideas supported by religion and arrogant people refusing to listen to practical experts from the lower classes, especially women.
Yes! I was just writing about Semmelweis on DW - and he was a middle-class bloke who wasn't believed about it.
I think the respectable part of the lack of acceptance by the medical community of the time was that the germ theory of disease wasn't established, and Semmelweis had no good theory for why washing your hands between guddling about in cadavers and delivering babies reduced puerperal fever. The mothers, of course, didn't care so much about that and knew fine they were safer with the midwives than the doctors ...
Oh wow, I had no idea. I'd just mentally assumed that tacking was a completely fundamental part of sailing, since it was one of the basics I learned as a kid.
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Oh, and cup holders in cars, I'm sure they could have been built with 60s technology, or even earlier :-)
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In my head I think you kind of need batteries before you can understand electricity at all - you need a dependable source to research it. Leyden jars were probably the earliest electrical storage system, and were critical to researching electricity at all, which led to stuff like Galvani's frog's legs and Volta's piles.
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I think the respectable part of the lack of acceptance by the medical community of the time was that the germ theory of disease wasn't established, and Semmelweis had no good theory for why washing your hands between guddling about in cadavers and delivering babies reduced puerperal fever. The mothers, of course, didn't care so much about that and knew fine they were safer with the midwives than the doctors ...
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