I think that for a lot of examples, the differentiating factor is infrastructure rather than science.

The current wave of AI needed fast, efficient computing power in massive data centres powered by a large electricity grid. The textiles industry in England needed coal mining, international shipping, tree trunks from the Baltic region, cordage from Manilla, and enclosure plus the associated legal change plus a bunch of displaced and desperate peasantry. Mobile phones took portable radio transmitters, miniaturised electronics, free space on the spectrum, population density high enough to make a network of towers economically viable, the internet backbone and power grid to connect those towers to, and economies of scale provided by a global shipping industry.

Long term progress seems to often be a dance where a boom in infrastructure unlocks new scientific inquiry, then science progresses to the point where it enables new infrastructure, then the growth of that new infrastructure unlocks new science, and repeat. There's also lag time based on bringing new researchers into a field and throwing greater funding into more labs, where the infrastructure is R&D itself.