[lordnacho]

Microprocessors are still relatively recent.

What about a bunch of other things like smelting iron or teaching everyone to read? They don't seem like choke points because we are long past them.

[lazide]

The bootstrapping required to produce an iron tool from scratch (really, a small village with a surplus of food sufficient for one full time adult male + accessible ores) is doable in less than a lifetime with some recorded knowledge on how to do it. Even if they’re literally at the mud hut stage.

Producing even the simplest IC? Definitely not. And that is ignoring the need for electricity and everything else required to actually use it.

[vbezhenar]

Smelting some iron is not that hard. You just burn special mud using coal and collect iron drops in the ashes afterwards.

Producing cheap iron is hard.

[baq]

Coal is a recent "invention". The Brits were pretty damn lucky they found lots of it under the last tree they chopped down. It was all wood before that.

[vbezhenar]

You can replace it with charcoal.

[baq]

Technically correct but that's what 'wood' meant

[ClumsyPilot]

The job is not done if you produce unaffordable iron. Producing lots of cheap iron is the job for Industrial Revolution