The capital investment for inventions a couple of centuries ago is totally different than today. We live in the age of Big Science, where scientific advancement requires large teams of highly skilled people using very expensive equipment and instrumentation. A lot of the advancements in physics in the late 19th century and early 20th century were done by one or two researchers with small scale university resources. Today, these same sorts of advancements are done by international teams of scientists using particle accelerators that require massive government investment by multiple countries.
I don't agree. Past innovation looks like low-hanging fruit, but consider things like the breakthrough production of graphene using nothing more elaborate than scotch tape. given the advances in computing power, you can get a lot of good work with a potential reward of $100k or $1 million.
