Photography is an interesting example of an invention that had only one piece missing for millennia. If the ancient Greeks knew enough chemistry to produce a light sensitive material (and a way to fix the result in place) we would have had Aristotle's selfie printed in some temple's wall
“Only one piece missing” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There is an entire tech tree between the Ancient Greeks and photography not the least of which is the hard transition from Platonism to empiricism during the Renaissance without which the development of chemistry stalled for many centuries. Their very metaphysics trapped them and prevented their philosophers from making those kinds of developmental leaps - they were stuck with earth, wind, water, and fire.
The irony being it took more than 2,000 years to come full circle to Platonic ideals with the periodic table and atomic theory, which are the foundations of chemistry.
With the benefit of hindsight, the ancient Greeks had both some perhaps surprisingly advanced science and gaps, especially in the physical sciences, that wouldn't be filled in for millennia.
>hard transition from Platonism to empiricism during the Renaissance
I'm highly suspicious of the historical accuracy of this popular claim. I don't think any such transition occurred. In fact I think the idea of the Renaissance is more myth than reality.
> If the ancient Greeks knew enough chemistry to produce a light sensitive material (and a way to fix the result in place)
We can imagine that they might have. According to Greek myth, the centaur Chiron made a silver shield that could capture a likeness. Maybe it was made of Silver nitrate? Add that to the fact the Greeks had a decent understanding of parabolic mirrors and that the aztecs produced optically correct lenses... One can imagine... Only imagine.
Text says "the world’s oldest surviving photograph", so I guess there were other known (or suspected?) photographs even before that, just not any that we still have a copy of?
Most of humanity has a phone now, and if half of them have cameras, we're talking at least 2 Billion cameras... a few thousand photos per person (that have almost zero cost)... I can see that happening quickly.
