That is just success bias. How many times did people try out perpetual motion machines? The rest of the article tries to make the converse that if something is inadequate today, it will be the replacement in the future.
When do you consider something to be not worth spending time on?
Mark Twain lost all of his money on a wide variety of speculative investments, most of which I would call fairly reasonable.
Getting in on the ground floor does you no good if it's the wrong kind of ground floor, or if it's the right kind of ground floor but the one next door ends up going to the moon while yours falters, or even if it's the right exact ground floor but you go bankrupt investing too early and the person who buys it from you rides it to the moon.
Or even turning lead into gold! A ton of famous scientist (i.e. Newton) were very busy with that idea but we end up only knowing them for other side projects/discoveries.
The abbreviation "i.e." stands for "id est" and means "that is". So what you have written means "A ton of famous scientist (that is, Newton)"...
Now while I'm sure Newton had gravitas (hah!), I doubt it amounted to a ton.
You want to use the abbreviation for "exempli gratia" which is "e.g." and means "for example".
It's a common mistake but easy to remember with eg-xample. :-)