Recommend wariness of technology history narratives, especially “just-so” retrocausal stories and, like this one demonstrates, “great man” narratives (like, but for this person, we would not have [invention mentioned in headline].

For example, the answer to ‘who invented the airplane’ takes different form depending primarily, in my experience, on the matchup between reporting outlet’s nationality and the nationality of the putative inventor(s). Qualifiers like ‘steady level flight’ follow from, and do not precede, the nationality matchup.

* studies technology history

https://archive.ph/OeuTH for those who aren't subscribers