This reminds me of an excellent series of lectures I once attended about how you can't have practical skyscrapers without inventing the elevator, you can't have practical automobiles without inventing the windshield wiper, and you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology, or efficient vacuum pumps.

Every big invention depends on hundreds or thousands of other ones you don't hear as much about.

> you can't have practical electric lighting without inventing a whole lot of power generation and distribution technology

Didn’t lighting cause power generation and distribution?