Quote:
Originally Posted by Rain Man
I don't know how evolved chemistry was at that point. I looked it up, and the periodic table first appeared in 1869. So per an earlier point, gasoline and oil and lubricants may be the most challenging part of reverse engineering a car, and I guess that would make sense. It was probably the last part that was developed when cars were invented the first time.
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Petroleum has been known for 4000 years, but the ability to distill kerosene from petroleum was only discovered in 1847, despite the fact that kerosene was a very useful means of providing artificial lighting at the time. I think this would have been one of the most challenging things to develop early.
Electric light bulbs (headlamps) were invented in 1879. I don't think they would have had good methods of determining the composition of the filaments to reverse engineer them.
The lead acid battery was first developed in 1859, although I don't think that would be too difficult to reverse engineer.
Rubber vulcanization was developed in 1839.