Yeah, I see what you mean, ascent. Mykrul, I really don't see how it should take you "hours upon hours" to come up with a short list to counter the one already posted... if that list exists, anyway.
If you don't want to even try to honestly debate this stuff, why are you posting about it?
You're right. It wouldn't. But all the same, I don't have the mental cycles to expend digging up privately funded research projects.
And the reason I went back to 1880? It was the surest way to find something I could be certain had no government intervention.
That was when the really big stuff was happening, anyway, the steam locomotive, the light bulb, the telegraph, all the technologies our current ones are based on.